Recently we picked up a few new clients who had been utilising the services of some “big SEO agencies” and “self proclaimed SEO experts”, however, let’s just say that these SEOs fell short on their promises of delivery.  Now, whilst we’re delighted to have picked up the new work, we were equally surprised (shocked even) at the quality of what was given to the client for to absorb.

Whenever we do something for a client, we do it throroughly and explain things simply. From building links, to ranking reports, to keyword research, right through to website analysis – it is all done with the greatest attention to detail, and it’s because of this that we regularly outperform our competitors. Recently however, we’ve been left speechless at some of the reports delivered to clients and the huge fees that accompanied them.

You see, the whole point of website analysis is not understood by a considerable number of SEO companies and in far too many cases analysis is packaged in such a way to bamboozle the client, justify huge fees and the SEO company does very little work. Clients are told that fees are justified by the time taken to report on what is happening or to delve deeper into the data to pinpoint where people are clicking and what phrases they are using.  Once that’s done the analysis report is sent  to the client (accompanied by the huge fee) and as Gordon Ramsay would say….done!

Actually, it’s not “done” in any sense of the word and let’s explain:

Take this example of website analysis our client was sent from their previous SEO company.

Analysis report for “Client www.mywebsite.com” by Big Ticket SEO Agency

Web traffic was up 7.4%….
Top key phrases “blue widgets”…
Bounce rate remained constant at 65%…
72% of visitors came from Google….
22% of traffic generated from PPC….

Blah…graphs

Blah…more graphs

Blah…pie charts

In all 12 pages of graphs, facts and figures.

Look familiar? If it does, and this is what your SEO company is charging you for every month then STOP!!! Take a step back and look at what you’ve actually been given and more importantly, what you’re going to do with it.

You see…what you’ve just paid for is not analysis at all – it’s a report – plain and simple. It may look impressive with all the graphs, percentages, bounce rates etc. It may tell you that you’ve had 10,000 visitors and your traffic has increased by 5%, but at the end of the day it’s just a report, and unless you know what to do with it you’d be as well throwing your money in the bin!

Analysis is a not a report

Analysis is about interrogating and evaluating website data, identifying failures and successes. It’s about asking questions and suggesting methods for improvement. Analysis is all about going forward and implemeting changes, washing, rinsing and repeating. Remember – analysis is not a report.

What is website analysis?

Website analysis in it’s simplest form is looking at the data from a previous month, determining where things have went right(or wrong) and making suggestions from experience, skill etc., in order to make improvements for future month(s).

There are many reporting tools that help in analysis such as Google’s Analytics, Heatmaps, List data, Server logs, split testing and PPC control panels. These tools provide a multitude of data to take forward into analysis.

An example website analysis would look like the following:

Data Report

Web traffic  up 7.4%….
Top key phrases “blue widgets”…
Bounce rate remained constant at 65%…
72% of visitors came from Google….
22% of traffic generated from PPC….

Findings from previous month

The changes made in sections x of the home pages and three landing pages had a mixed effect. Scroll lengths were improved enticing visitors to read more. Paragraphs were shortened which kept the visitor engaged. Interspersed in these were calls to action both in web copy and sidebar forms/imagery. There was a negative effect noticed in the split when the sign up form was changed from green to red.

Questions

Q. How many clicked on our special offer call to action?
Q. How many did not? Would it improve click throughs if the call to action text was changed to bold?
Q. How many arrived from

• Google
• Yahoo

Q. Does Yahoo perform better in sales than Google for the same phrase?
Q. How many visitors were from organic versus paid search and should more be spent on organic?
Q. How far did visitors scroll down the page?
Q. How do click clusters compare on visitor volume to page?
Q. Conversions are down on page x – is this seasonal influences?
Q. Which calls to action are failing/performing best?
Q. What improvements can be made to influence higher click through rates to deep pages .
Q. Did long copy pages outperform short copy pages on split tests?

Deliverables

1. Set splits up to measure impact of bold versus colour font variations in calls to action
2. Move forms up above fold
3. Change telephone number to text from image to display as skype anchor
4. Test questions in H1 tags over statements and measure effect
5. etc……

The above gives you some idea of what true website analysis really is and becomes useful to the client. This is much more useful because;

1. The client can see progress and ways forward
2. The client can make sense of the graphs and terminology
3. The client/SEO can learn from successes and failures
4. The SEO company demosntrates their expertise
5. The SEO company can improve the performance of the site

Conclusion

Your website analysis report should contain recommendations, questions, deliverables and explanations of previous actions in addition to statistics data.

If it contains only data, graphs and statistics etc., then we’d strongly recommend you question your SEO Company. Analytics packages can produce these reports in seconds so don’t be fooled if you’re charged large fees for this type of service.

We advise you to be extremely cautious of such companies, especially cold callers offering you “one months free trial on Google” or “£20 links”.

We have heard reports of companies who have had unauthorised transactions taken from their bank accounts as a result of these offers.

The sales tactics of these companies are high pressure, enticing you with incredible offers and they won’t take no for an answer.

This looks to be increasing in the run up to christmas and we advise companies to be extremely cautious if you do receive any cold calls of this nature.

The more people that know about this the better.

We’ve listed some of the things to be on the lookout for:

1. Do not trust any company cold calling you claiming to be

• from “Google sales”
• “authorised by Google”
• “Google asked us to call you”
• “We are caling on behalf of Google”
• “We saw your ad on Yell.com”

(No one is authorised by Google.)

2. Do not trust any company claiming to

• resell Google advertising space
• offer bulk discounts on Google AdWords  or links
• have an exclusive contract with Google

(Google do not have resellers, offer bulk discounts to resellers or have exclusive contracts.)

3. Do NOT under any circustances

• sign up for a “free 1 month’s free trial”
• give a deposit to “secure advertising space”
• sign up for £99 a month deals that guarantee number 1 positions
• sign up for £20 a link deals

(If you do sign up for any of these deals then you run the risk of payments being taken from your bank account or credit card.)

4. Don’t always trust the company if they claim to be “Google Qualified” on it’s website.

Any company can put a “Google Qualified” advert on their website. If a company is genuinely Google qualified then clicking on the logo will go to Google’s verification page.

NOTE: Google “Qualified” does not neccessary mean a reputable company. The Google qualification logo is widely abused.

Note also that Google is a private commercial company and their accreditation is a purely commercial award (you have to pay to obtain it). It is not a professional qualification such as that given to a doctor, engineer or accountant and it is not recognised by any professional Institution.

If you are intending to employ the services of an AdWords services company then we advise that you meet with them or have them meet with you on a face to face basis. Ask for references and check the company out in any way you can. Any reputable company will be upfront about their processes, charges, expectations etc.

You may think you have the best looking and funkiest website on the planet but did you realise that the design of your site may actually be preventing you from making sales? It’s been a widely (and wrongly) held belief that a well designed website with lovely graphics will attract more sales on it’s own. Whilst this “may” work for a very tiny number of websites the facts are that fancy design is well down the list when visitors first look at your pages.

Web users know what they want – so don’t make it hard for them!

Web users have evolved. They’re less impressed by fancy design and more concerned with what they want. They’re spoilt for choice and will typically only spend 4-10 seconds evaluating your front page before deciding to stay and read on or puke and go check a competitor. Obviously you want them to stay and buy so we need to find out what’s causing them to leave – cue the heatmap.

What are heatmaps?

Heatmaps are invisible click counters that measure where your visitors click on your web page. Whenever a visitor clicks on your web page the heatmap records where they clicked and stores this for you to view later. If many visitors click on a certain link then the colour of these clicks are displayed as “hotspots” hence the term heat maps.

In online marketing heatmaps are used to obtain vital inofrmation about where visitors are clicking on and equally what they are NOT clicking. From this we can make improvements to the website and subsequently make more sales.

The heatmap image below shows hotspots generated from visitor clicks. These are popular so we need to keep these. The areas where there are little or no clicks are wasting valuable space and should be replaced by other better links.

So why would you deploy a heat map?

Heatmaps can provide you vital information on how visitors are reacting with your website. The click hotspots that are generated tell you that these are areas that visitors are interested in whereas the areas with very few clicks are not. From the heat map you can then adjust your website to move these non performing areas to a lower part of the page and replace them with your important calls to action such as a buy now or register now link.

Keep your best performers in sight

We know from hundreds of heatmaps that up to 95% of all clicks occur in the area before visitors have to scroll – this is called the “fold”. More importantly however – this means that 95% of your visitors will never scroll if what they want is not on the page! So do you really want to hide that buy now button at the foot of your web page?

How a heatmap improved our client’s sales.

Look at the Google analytics snapshot from one of our client’s websites. Their website was already doing quite well but we knew we get some extra sales so we deployed a heatmap to see where they were clicking. After a couple of weeks we noticed very definite hotspots and very definite cold spots. We removed these coldspot links and replaced them with warmer links from other areas of the site. The result was that traffic increased, bounce rate dropped, visitors were staying on pages longer, sales improved and the client was happier*.

* We can provide details of this case study on request if you are interested in conducting a heatmap study for your site. Please contact us for more information.

Image below shows clear performance increases accross the board after changing the layout of the site to increase sales. The red dot signifies the change in design. Note the graphs show increases (good) for time on site, pages per visit and a decrease in bounce rate (also good).

We

Discovering your key phrases using Google Analytics

Log into your GA account, click on view report for your website then click on the date range dropdown in the top righthand corner to display the date range calendar. Select a date range of around 6 months and click apply.

Next click “Content” from the main menu on the left then scroll down the page a little and you should see you list of options for drilling down your keywords. See below;

Click on the entrance keywords link and wait for the page to load your list of keyphrases. Scroll down and click on the dropdown and select 500.

The page will then reload and this will display your list of keywords and keyphrases with your main target keyphrases occupying the first 10-15 places. There may be more of your main phrases depending on how many pages you have optimised for these terms but for simplicity lets assume it’s the first 10 results. Any phrase below these can be considered as longtail and it’s these phrases that we’re interested in.

As you scroll down the list you should notice combinations of your main keyphrases surrounded or blended by other words. For example say your main keyphrase for one of your pages was “search engine optimisation”. Because people have used a multitude of different searches you may see different combinations of your main phrases such as below.

buy search engine optimisation services
top search engine optimisation consultants
where is the best search engine optimisation company
best price on search engine optimisation
search engine optimisation consultants in scotland
search engine optimisation company in edinburgh

So why all the variations?

People are smarter at searching nowadays and they realise that they may need to add extra words in the search to obtain a more accurate result. Google has provided a result based upon other words that match the users search and has indexed your site in their listings.

Determine your longtail keyphrase position in Google’s SERPs

The next step in the process is to select one of your long tail phrases and see where it is listed in Google’s results. To do this simply copy the longtail phrase and search for it on Google. Chances are you may not be on the first page but don’t worry about this – just drill down until you find your page in the results.

When you find it, click on the link that says “cached” below Google’s description for your page. The next page displays the highlighted keywords in the grey bar. Google also highlights the same key words in your page’s content. See image.

This will tell you how many times the words appear as a phrase or as single words and from this you have several options for optimising your page for this specific longtail phrase such as…

1. Add the exact phrase to a paragraph in your page

2. Provide a link from one of your other pages using the exact phrase in the anchor text

3. Ask for a link to your page using the exact phrase in the anchor text

4. Create a new page and use the exact phrase in the page title, h1 tags, paragraphs etc as you would for optimising a standard page

5. If you run a blog then create a blog post optimised around this phrase

6. If you post regularly on a forum or a blog then use this exact phrase in your footer or blog post linking back to your page.

Of course there are many ways you can incorporate your longtail phrase in your pages and that’s part of the attraction. The main purpose is to rank as high as possible for these phrases and hopefully you will rank higher and sell more online.

If you would like to know more about lontgtail optimisation then please contact us.

Meta Descriptions and their uses.

Meta descriptions are special tags in the code of a web page. They are used to describe the contents of that web page and for the purposes of Google they should be approximately 160 characters long. Now…when we say for the purposes of Google it should be noted that Google does not use Meta Descriptions to rank pages. These are purely optional and Google “may” decide to use them in it’s listings when describing your web page. 

Clearly if Google doesn’t need them then what’s the point in using them at all? Some argue that use of the Meta Description tag can be used to “control” what Google displays about your web page and your click through rates will improve as a result of this. This stems from many claims that by adding your trophy key phrases in the Meta description it is more appealing to the searcher and they are more likely to click through to your web page – thereby increasing click through rates. There may be a very few instances where this may be true but in the vast majority of cases this is a mistake. Why? Because Google derives it’s descriptions from several sources – some information may be taken from the meta description, some from the page content and some from your dmoz.org listing (if you have one).

From these, its algorithim decides what the best description is for any given web page and it may include a description that includes elements from all three sources.

When it’s best not to use the meta description tag

Let’s illustrate things with this example for a plumber’s website.

Meta Description – “Acme Plumbers based in Mytown for 10 years. Best Plumbers in the area Call us on 0207 111 1111″
Page Content – “Acme plumbers are a long established award winning company.We fit boilers, radiators, gas central heating and are BS9000 registered. We work to the highest plumbing standards and all our time served plumbers are qualified to BS5750 and above. We serve in areas throughout mytown and the surrounding distrcts etc., etc.”

From the above web page, the forced inclusion of the meta description poses a problem in that it reduces the potential for longtail keyphrases to be included in the Google description. As mentioned before, the length of the meta description that Google reads is only 160 characters and it is extremely difficult to write an effective meta description that includes all your possible longtail phrases – impossible in the majority of cases.

By including the meta description in the above web page the plumber has also allowed Google to include this in its listings description so it may appear like below;

Acme plumbers – Mytown, My Country [Title]
Acme Plumbers based in Mytown for 10 years. Best Plumbers in the area Call us on 0207 111 1111 [Meta Description]

This effectively reduces the number of keywords;
plumbers mytown
Acme plumbers
plumbers mytown area

If however, you exclude the meta description you “force” Google to obtain a description from the page content and the result may look like this. This expands the potential for matching your trophy keywords with a large number of longtail query matches.

Acme plumbers – Mytown, My Country [Title]
Acme plumbers…boilers, radiators, plumbing to ISO 9000…plumbers throughout mytown and district. [Meta Description]

keyphrases for above would be;
plumbers mytown
Acme plumbers
plumbers mytown radiators
plumbers cerified iso9000
plumbing boilers mytown bs5750
plumbers to fit central heating
etc.
etc.
etc.

Remember, when Google displays results, it bolds the keywords and key phrases the user search for. Think longtail combinations and potential for click throughs based on the non meta description scenario. It’s also worth remembering that whilst it’s possible that Google’s algorithim may ignore your meta description entirely and scrape the content from your page, it’s not really something you should rely on.

Blogs, sites with hundreds of pages and shopping website that contain large product catalogs are the type of site that we would not recommend using meta descriptions. Such sites typically benefit from longtail searches. For example, product catalogs normally contain excellent snippets of information about the product in the first paragraph so why go and spoil things by including meta descriptions?

Times when you may wish to include meta descriptions.

Typically if you were targetting a 2-3 word key phrase then it may be that a meta description would work. If you don’t have any content relevant within your page or relevant to the search term then a meta description tag may also help. A single page website made in Flash would benefit from a meta description. Good examples.

A meta description may account for better click throughs if it is a “better” description than that of the other descriptions in the listings but this requires more evidence (eye tracking tests have shown the title tag to be the most effective in search engine listings).

Conclusion

If you’re hell bent on settling the debate for yourself you could always try split testing to see which pages give the best click throughs, but we feel it’s more effort than it’s worth. At the end of the day you’re after the best click through rates. Keywords can help this greatly but the problem is that you don’t always know what keywords people are searching on. Our feet are planted in the “leave them out” camp and let Google figure out the best descriptions. Good luck.

Attract the bargain hunters

Now is a good time to stress the importance of web marketing. In times like these, people are often online seeking out good deals and alternative ways of doing things. Your online marketing techniques need to be good enough to get their attention and take advantage of the fact that people have not stopped wanting things, they have simply become fussier and are willing to search a little harder for the right deal.

Therefore,your internet marketing needs to be tighter and better than ever just now, those who are sloppy during this period are missing out on the massive potential there is among the huge numbers out there seeking bargains.

Good search engine marketing will increase your visibility and heighten your profile among those seeking bargains. A higher Google ranking will result in more visits to your website and results will follow.

Make your internet marketing work

There is nothing to be gained from focusing on the economic doom and gloom highlighted in the media. Pouring your efforts into an effective internet marketing strategy will prove in the long run to be a more rewarding use of your resources.

In these circumstances, it pays to talk to people in the know. Breeze Media have a proven track record with this stuff and know the right strategy that will produce the right results for you. Understanding the internet is our core business and we are best equipped to make your business shine brightly across the world wide web.

Proven winners

There are customers out there searching for you, they just don’t know how to find you right now. We can help bring them to you and they know that increased efficiency with internet marketing will ultimately lead to an increase in sales. The theory is simple, the execution is a little more complicated so place your trust in proven winners. Be the best you can be with a little help from your friends at Breeze Media!

How do you know which pages are your exit pages?

If you have Google Analytics installed then you can identify the pages that your visitors are leaving from to move to another site. These are called your “exit pages”. To identify these pages, log into your analytics account then select, content>top exit pages from the menu on the left. You will see a list of pages that your visitors last viewed. Take note of these and write them down for the next part.

How do you make money from these pages?

Once you have identified your exit pages, edit your page by placing an advert such as a Google adsense ad, an affiliate link or a display banner in the top, middle and bottom of your page. This way you maximise the opportunity to make some cash as the visitor scrolls down the page. It really is that simple!

What if you don’t want to display 3rd party adverts?

No problem! You can still maximise potential for your own site and reduce your website’s bounce rates. If you’re not keen on having your site display 3rd party adverts then why not maximise the potential for your visitors to view other pages on your own site? It could be a special offer, a promotion or a signup page for a newsletter. Do exactly the same thing – place your own adverts or text links at the top centre and bottom of your page and we’re certain you will see an improvement!

Don’t miss this opportunity! Be an early adopter! You “google” for things, you “blog” information. Twittering is fast becoming the next big thing! Soon you’ll be “twittering” for things!

Get on the “twitter highway” now – be an early adopter

Thanks to the techies and geeks, twittering is already the “next big thing”. Just like blogging was a few years back, it was mostly the techies and geeks that adopted it. Then came the marketers and the entrepreneurs who saw the potential for business opportunities – clearly now is the time for businesses to hop onboard the twitter highway and stake a claim.

Twitter B2B real life example – how you can make it work for you.

Because it’s early days there’s a lot of “fluff” on twitter B2B at present and not a lot of real time examples but hopefully what we’ve done for one of our B2B clients will help you draw inspiration.

What follows is an example where the idea of “less is more” brought in more sales from exisiting customers and some new referals from the very same customers.

Example

Our client sells a type of machinery. They offer support, maintenance contracts, spare parts, consumables and new machinery when the old ones need replaced. All their business is B2B.

What we did:

• Created a twitter account for the client.
• Mailshot went out to client’s customers asking them to follow them on twitter
• Got the client to post regular updates, news, snippets etc about their machinery, updates, etc.
• Initiated a converation

Initially the converation was very slow to begin but a few nudges to their customers enabled the “conversation” to begin proper. As the conversation grew, so did customer participation. Where previously they would inform their customers of new offers on consumables by way of mailshot or email they started “twittering” offers on single products. This worked very well and brought in two things;

• New sales from existing customers
• Referals from customers to other businesses – e.g. “hey guys – Acme have a sale on consumables this week”

In addition to new sales, twittering has benefitted our client in terms of noticeable cost savings. These are: 

1. They have saved money on printing and mailshots by sending out single product offers. Many of their customers don’t have time to read mailshots which tended to be filed away.

2. They saved themselves time inhouse. They did not need to spend time working out prices on entire product ranges, spend time writing offers, distributing etc. Their time was spent better on what they do best.

3. They can be proactive and reactive in the field. Sales staff and technical staff can twitter by mobile phone to inform their followers of any offers or product news. 

We would love to hear of any similar stories you have on B2B twittering. Please post your comments below.

If you would like us to help you with twitter and B2B marketing then please contact us.

Whilst Google’s Analytics gives you all the key data on where your visitors came from, what pages they access, what key phrases they used etc., this is all the before information. Analytics doesn’t tell you what your visitors do when they are actually on your website, and this is extremely valuable information to have.

If you have a site that is attracting decent traffic but failing to convert your visitors into customers then a heatmap can help identify areas where your site could be performing better. As well as showing you what your visitors do click on, it shows you what your visitors do not click, and this could be the most important button on your website – the “buy me now” button.

Image below shows where visitors have been clicking on the web page.

Heatmaps are special invisible overlays that record the areas where visitors click when they visit your website. They are invaluable when trying to identify underperforming areas in a web page. You can view these clicked areas then make adjustments to optimise your pages for the best possible levels of conversion.

For example, say your website sells pens/pencils. Your website looks great, your traffic is great but visitors are not buying your products. A heatmap will identify all the areas your visitors are clicking and not clicking. It may be that your “order now” button is not in a prominent position and needs to be moved to a different area of the page. Or it may be that your visitor has to scroll and by this time they have lost interest and went elsewhere. Either way a heatmap will identify these problem areas.

If you have an underperforming website then we can install a heatmap and analyse the areas that require improvement. Give us a call or contact us now to discuss your website.