Press Release Zone

Google Analytics has become the preferred option among frëe statistics programs. Like any other stats program, Google Analytics provides data on the number of visitors, and page views, referral sources, entry and exit pages, and more. Unlike most other programs, Google Analytics includes the ability to track and monitor pay-per-clíck (PPC) campaigns. Other useful information includes the geographic location of your visitors, their internet connection speed, and their screen resolutions. You can sign up for Google Analytics at:

http://bizsolutions.google.com/services/

2 – Google Webmaster Tools

Want to know how the largest search engine in the world sees your website? Google’s Webmaster Tools will give you loads of information such as the pages that are indexed, errors found by the Googlebot (dead links), your search engine rankings for specific search phrases, your anchor text on inbound links, internal and external link data, and robots.txt and sitemap data.

By knowing how Google sees your site you will find some basic items that you’ll need to change in order to reach your maximum potential in search engine traffíc. You can sign up for Google Webmaster Tools at:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

3 – SEOmoz’s Page Strength Tool

SEOmoz is one of the leading search engine optimization (SEO) firms and their website provides a wealth of information through their blog, articles and tools. Their Page Strength Tool shows you the “relative importance and visibility” and the “potential strength and ability of a page to rank in the search engines.” SEOmoz provides a quick way to get a basic look at the strength of your page. The Page Strength Tool can be used at:

http://www.seomoz.org/page-strength

4 – Sitening.com’s SEO Analyzer

Sitening is another leading SEO firm with several valuable tools on their website. The SEO Analyzer differs from SEOmoz’s Page Strength Tool in that it checks the internal structure of your site to determine how well it is constructed (in terms of search engine optimization). The structure of a website is the framework for a good SEO campaign, and Sitening.com’s SEO Analyzer will help you to build the right framework. Sitening.com’s SEO Analyzer can be found at:

http://www.sitening.com/seo-tools/seo-analyzer/
5 – Mike’s Marketing Tools

MikesMarketingTools.com has two tools that every webmaster should use regularly. The Search Engine Rankings Tool will show you where your site ranks in several of the top search engines for a specific word or phrase. You can save time by using this tool instead of visiting each search engine and clicking through the search engine results pages to find your website.

The Link Popularity Tool will quickly show you how many inbound links each search engine recognizes for your site. Inbound links are a major factor in search engine rankings and each search engine recognizes a different number of links. From this tool you can also clíck through to see the specific pages that are linking to you. To use these tools visit:

http://www.mikes-marketing-tools.com/free-marketing-tools.html

6 – Summit Media’s Spider Simulator

The spider simulator shows you “how a search engine reacts to your pages and what can be done to boost your usability.” Search engine spiders see web pages much differently than human visitors do. A page may look attractive and well-designed to a human visitor, but a search engine spider may not be able to find what it is looking for. This page is a great tool to assure you that your site is built for maximum search engine results. The spider simulator can be used at:

http://tools.summitmedia.co.uk/spider/

7 – SelfSEO Page Speed Checker

Your average website visitor will have a very short attention span. To have the best chance of making a positive first impression on new visitors your page must load quickly enough that they do not leave right away. SelfSEO has a Page Speed Tool that shows you how long your page takes to load. The tool allows you to enter multiple pages to chëck at one time. It is a good idea to compare the load time of your page against pages from several other websites. Try entering your homepage and the homepage of several of your competitors. If your page loads considerably slower than the others, try to make the file smaller by reducing the number and size of images or by cleaning up the coding. The Page Speed Tool can be used at:

http://www.selfseo.com/website_speed_test.php

8 – Dead Links Checker

Having dead links on your website can frustrate visitors and damage your search engine rankings. However, checking all the links on your site manually is not realistic. Fortunately there are a number of tools online that will automate the process. The W3 Link Checker will crawl through your pages and report which links are broken. To use this tool visit:

http://validator.w3.org/checklink

9 – GoogleRankings.com

GoogleRankings.com will show you which words and phrases appear most frequently on your website throughout the text of the page, title, headings and meta tags. This is a useful tool to be certain that your pages are optimized for the words and phrases that you are targeting.

10 – FeedBurner

If you publish a blog, FeedBurner’s service is a must have. Feedburner will provide you with statistics regarding your blog’s feed and you can give your readers the option to subscribe by email instead of RSS. There are a number of other features that you can read about at FeedBurner. With FeedBurner you can always see how many subscribers you have and how many of them are clicking through from your feed to your site.
About The Author
Steven Snell is a web designer for Vandelay Website Design. Steven regularly writes new articles on the topics of design, blogging, marketing and eearch engine optimization. His articles can be read on the blog at http://www.vandelaydesign.com.

These figures are the most accurate measure of your website’s activity. It would appear on the surface that the more traffíc you see recorded, the better you can assume your website is doing, but this is an inaccurate perception. You must also look at the behavior of your visitors once they come to your website to accurately gauge the effectiveness of your site.

Traffíc Analysis

There is often a great misconception about what is commonly known as “hits” and what is really effective, quality traffíc to your site. Hits simply means the number of information requests received by the server. If you think about the fact that a hit can simply equate to the number of graphics per page, you will get an idea of how overblown the concept of hits can be. For example, if your homepage has 15 graphics on it, the server records this as 15 hits, when in reality we are talking about a single visitor checking out a single page on your site. As you can see, hits are not useful in analyzing your website traffíc.

The more visitors that come to your website, the more accurate your interpretation will become. The greater the traffíc is to your website, the more precise your analysis will be of overall trends in visitor behavior. The smaller the number of visitors, the more a few anomalous visitors can distort the analysis.

The aim is to use the web traffíc statistics to figure out how well or how poorly your site is working for your visitors. One way to determine this is to find out how long on average your visitors spend on your site. If the time spent is relatively brief, it usually indicates an underlying problem. Then the challenge is to figure out what that problem is.

It could be that your keywords are directing the wrong type of visitors to your website, or that your graphics are confusing or intimidating, causing the visitor to exit rapidly. Use the knowledge of how much time visitors are spending on your site to pinpoint specific problems, and after you fix those problems, continue to use time spent as a gauge of how effective your fix has been.

Additionally, web traffíc stats can help you determine effective and ineffective areas of your website. If you have a page that you believe is important, but visitors are exiting it rapidly, that page needs attention. You could, for example, consider improving the link to this page by making the link more noticeable and enticing, or you could improve the look of the page or the ease that your visitors can access the necessary information on that page.

If, on the other hand, you notice that visitors are spending a lot of time on pages that you think are less important, you might consider moving some of your salës copy and marketing focus to that particular page.

As you can see, these statistics will reveal vital information about the effectiveness of individual pages, and visitor habits and motivation. This is essential information to any successful Internet marketing campaign.

Your website undoubtedly has exit pages, such as a final order or contact förm. This is a page you can expect your visitor to exit rapidly. However, not every visitor to your site is going to find exactly what he or she is looking for, so statistics may show you a number of different exit pages. This is normal unless you notice an exit trend on a particular page that is not intended as an exit page. In the case that a significant percentage of visitors are exiting your website on a page not designed for that purpose, you must closely examine that particular page to discern what the problem is. Once you pinpoint potential weaknesses on that page, minor modifications in content or graphics may have a significant impact on the keeping visitors moving through your site instead of exiting at the wrong page.

After you have analyzed your visitor statistics, it’s time to turn to your keywords and phrases. Notice if particular keywords are directing a specific type of visitor to your site. The more targeted the visitor – meaning that they find what they are looking for on your site, and even better, fill out your contact förm or make a purchase – the more valuable that keyword is.

However, if you find a large number of visitors are being directed – or should I say misdirected – to your site by a particular keyword or phrase, that keyword demands adjustment. Keywords are vital to bringing quality visitors to your site who are ready to do business with you. Close analysis of the keywords your visitors are using to find your site will give you a vital understanding of your visitor’s needs and motivations.

Finally, if you notice that users are finding your website by typing in your company name, break open the champagne! It means you have achieved a significant level of brand recognition, and this is a sure sign of burgeoning success.
About The Author
Don Resh is CEO of WebForce Inc. .

As many of you may know I am a huge fan of the logfile version of ClickTracks Professional, a website analytics package that I find indispensable for myself and my clientele. ClickTracks can do a lot to determine what is or is not working on a website; much more than expected in most cases. The one thing, however, that ClickTracks or any other logfile-based analytics tool cannot do is interpret information in your logfiles if it is not recorded. Unfortunately this is a common occurrence and many site owners have no idea that their hosting company is not saving information that could help them now or later when they find they need it.

The reality is that over ninety percent of the hosting companies I have dealt with have not been saving the vital data that a higher level analytics program needs; to work at peak performance if at all. In this posting I will provide an overview on this issue so you have enough information to approach your hosting company about making the required updates to their systems. If you are unsure, you can even refer them to this article and/or the set of questions and details I provided below.

What is a Logfile?

First, let me explain the very basic idea of what a logfile is and how one is created.

Whenever you visit a website your browser requests information from the server hosting the website. This request is passed onto the server and in turn the server delivers the information requested by your browser. Whenever this exchange takes place your server saves the request along with a host of information about the requesting browser such as:

• the internet address (loosely connected to location) known as the IP
• browser type (Internet Explorer or Firefox or..)
• the screen resolution of the browser used
• time and date of the request
• the page requested for viewing
• the website the visitor came from (known as a Referrer)
• if applicable, the keyword(s) that were used to find your website on a search engine
• etc.

Once this data is collected it is saved on the server in a logfile for later use and over time it is often overwritten with new data so the files do not get too large; they bulk up very quickly especially on high-traffic websites.

How Can Logfiles Help Improve Your Website?

Now that you know what data is collected it is time to explain, in general terms, how this data can be used to help your website. There is a wide variety of information that can be gleaned from a complete logfile such as:

• How long visitors stay at your website or on a particular page.
• What pages they visited.
• Where visitors are viewing your website from geographically.
• What keywords were used to visit your website and which search engines were driving the highest volume and/or quality traffic.
• Which pages had the highest or least traffic.
• The average time a visitor stays at your website: often a great indication of the ‘stickiness’ of your website.
• You can determine the effectiveness of your pay-per-click campaign by tracking visitors specifically delivered from the campaign.
• Identify potential pay-per-click fraud using tools like ClickTracks Professional that has a click fraud reporting tool.
• and much more…

So What’s the Issue?

Many hosting companies are smart enough to include a basic web analytics program with every account. These programs are decent for anyone who wants to simply find out the traffic to their website and a myriad of other basic stats. However, there is often a pitfall to these basic programs. You see in order to save on computer performance the hosting company usually sets their servers to collect only the minimal data these basic systems require. As a result, more complex logfile-based analytics programs may find themselves starved of the data they need to operate fully. This is where my clients have found themselves before; they have sub-par logfiles and are forced to try and convince their hosting company to change their data collection methods to meet more advanced standards.

If you have no interest in website analytics you may find this whole scenario to be a non-issue. I completely understand, however, put yourself a year or even a month down the road when your website is taking off and you need to know more about the visitors to your website. You just might find yourself in this same frustrating scenario and it will seem absolutely insane how hard you have to push to get this data properly collected.

Unfortunately, unless you are leasing a private (dedicated) server from the hosting company they tend to set up their shared servers with only the basic needs of the majority in mind. As a result, the only way to force change is if more customers consider it a basic need – thus the reason for this article. Help me affect change so that you save yourself a headache in the future!

How to Be Sure Your Server is Collecting the Right Information

Most of you cannot check your logfiles for completeness with an analytics program so you will have to trust your server administrators to do their due diligence based on the following question.

Note: If you like you can just copy and paste the following question (noted in red) and send it to your hosting company support staff:

Hello, I would like to make sure my website’s logfiles have the necessary information to run a higher end web analytics program. Is your server set up to collect the data on my website? I need this data to properly analyze the traffic on my website.

• Date and Time
• Client IP Address
• HTTP Method
• Requested file and Query string
• User Agent
• Referrer
• Status code
• Cookie (preferable, but not required)

If you are unsure of the answer or you need to set this up then please review the settings that need to be enabled on Apache servers or Microsoft Internet Information Servers; these pages include instructions if you need them. 

Sincerely,
<>

My Hosting Company Disregarded This as Nonsense

I fully expect some will and that is because many website owners still care little or nothing about web site statistics so they have not even used the basic data to its fullest yet – and hosting companies are aware of this. In fact, a good fríend who owns a hosting company himself guessed around 95% of his website clients don’t even look at their stats. This is all true, however, does that mean that important data should not be collected for those who do want to delve deeper into analytics? I don’t believe so and the changes you are requesting will only raise the size of the logfiles for your website a small amount. Unless of course you don’t even have logfiles which is enough for me to recommend you take your services elsewhere.

Why Not Use Google Analytics Instead?

Google Analytics is an awesome solution for many small businesses. It does not require logfiles and it takes a marginal amount of work to begin acquiring proper data. In fact, I think it is a great tool for the majority of businesses that want to wade into a mid range analytics solution providing you are comfortable with Google having access to your stats. That said, there is one MAJOR flaw in using Google Analytics… it does not have reliable click fraud reporting. You see many of my clients use ClickTracks to monitor their pay per click campaign for click fraud which is not something I would ever trust Google to police itself on. That does not mean I do not use Google Analytics. In fact, whenever possible I use both ClickTracks and Google Analytics in tandem for redundancy especially when certain capabilities such as cookie tracking are not available from a hosting provider – Google includes cookies by default.

In Summary

Many website owners have no idea what they will or will not need in the future to properly administrate their online marketíng campaigns. This article discusses a simple adjustment to the accumulation of website logfiles that I strongly believe all competent hosting companies should implement in order to provide scalability for their clientele. The adjustment will provide the additional information that a competent analytics solution will need to provide accurate statistics.
About The Author
Ross Dunn is the CEO and founder of StepForth Web Marketing Inc, a web marketing company founded in 1997 and based in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. StepForth provides cutting-edge web marketing services that provide highly successful, targeted results for its clientele. Ross Dunn is a Certified Internet Marketing and Business Strategist (CIMBS) with a background in web design and online marketíng. His broad Internet experience in combination with a talented staff has made StepForth a name synonymous with top results.

2. Thou Shalt Not Be Promotional.
If you can’t get enough objective distance from your company to write a press release that’s not filled with hype and puffery, hire someone to write it for you.

3. Thou Shalt Not Be Boring.
Even the driest subject matter allows for some sparks of creativity. Journalists like knowing that there’s a human being communicating with them, not some corporate robot.

4. Thou Shalt Be Brief.
Learn to cut out extraneous words. Keep your sentences short. Include only the points necessary to sell the story. The well-crafted one page press release is a thing of beauty.

5. Thou Shalt Know Thy Recipient.
A features or lifestyle editor is a very different creature from a city desk editor. If you’re promoting the opening of a new winery, the food and wine editor may be interested in all the details about what kind of aging process and wine press you’re using. The city desk editor just wants to know when the grand opening is and what’s going to happen there.

6. Thou Shalt Use The Proper Tense.
When writing a hard news release — a contract signing, a stöck split, a major announcement, etc.) use the past tense (Acme Industries has changed its name to AcmeCo, the company announced today…) When writing a soft news release — a trend story, a personal profile, etc. — use the present tense (Jane Smith is one of the best marathon runners over 40. She’s also blind. Thanks to new technology from AcmeCo, Jane is able to…).

7. Thou Shalt Think Visually.
A press release is more than words — it’s a visual document that will first be assessed by how it looks.

I’m referring to more than font size or letterhead. I’m talking about the actual layout of the words. Whether received by mail, fax or e-mail, a journalist — often unconsciously — will make decisions about whether to read the release based on how the release is laid out. Big blocks of text and long paragraphs are daunting and uninviting. Short paragraphs and sentences make for a much more visually inviting look.

When writing a non-hard news release, I often use a simple formula — the lead paragraph should be one or two sentences at most. The next paragraph should be very, very short.

Like this.

8. Thou Shalt Tell A Story.
How to arrange the facts of a hard news release is pretty much cut and dried. The old “who, what, when, where and how” lead and “inverted pyramid” concepts still hold. (Rather than engage you in a course in basic newswriting, I’ll direct you to a really good discussion of what the inverted pyramid is.

Chëck out:

http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=52&aid=38693

So let’s focus on a soft news release. The trend story, the feel-good company story, the “gee-whiz, I didn’t know anyone was doing that!” release. The difference between these releases and the hard news release is simply a mirror of the difference between a feature story in, say, the entertainment section of your newspaper and the breaking news report on page one. The hard news story is about cold, hard facts (A mudslide closed portions of Interstate 70 last night, causing massive delays). A feature article about the guy who spends all day looking at seismograph readouts trying to predict where the next mudslide will occur will be very different. It’s likely to be in present tense, it won’t load all the facts upfront and it will be designed to draw the reader deep into the text. It is, in short, all about storytelling.

Here’s the formula I use for these kinds of releases. I call it the 3S approach — Situation/Surprise/ Support.

The first paragraph sets up the situation. The second paragraph reveals the surprise. The third paragraph supports the claim made in the second paragraph.

One very typical 3S is discussing a common problem in the first paragraph (For centuries, people have accepted memory loss as an inevitable result of aging.) The “surprise” paragraph announces the solution to the problem (But one local man says he’s ready to prove the medical establishment wrong.) The “support” paragraph then tells the story. (John Smith, an Anytown entrepreneur, says he’s found the key to retaining a strong memory function far into old age. His “Memory Maker” software is based on ancient Chinese texts that were used more than 2000 years ago to…)

Another 3S — let’s revisit our mudslide watching friend. How would you start his story using this method?

While John Smith’s colleagues at the National Atmospheric Center are watching the skies for signs of lightning and tornadoes, his attention is focused elsewhere.

John Smith is listening to the mud.

As the Chief Mudslide Analyst at the NAC, Smith spends his days glued to a seismograph, eyes and ears peeled for the telltale signs on an impending slide.

Along with the 3S in action, I also followed the 7th Commandment. That really short second paragraph is a visual grabber, and will keep the journalist reading right into the meat of the release.

9. Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness.
This may seem an obvious point, but it always bears repeating.

Tell the truth.

Don’t inflate, don’t confabulate, don’t exaggerate. Don’t twist facts, don’t make up numbers, don’t make unsubstantiated claims. Any decent journalist will be able to see right through this. If you’re lucky, your release will just get tossed out. If you’re unlucky, you’ll be exposed.

It’s a chance not at all worth taking. Make sure every release you write is honest and on the level.

10. Thou Shalt Know Thy Limitations.
Not everyone can write a press release. A good feature release, in particular, isn’t an easy thing to craft. If you just don’t feel like you have the chops to get the job done, hire a professional.

One last tip: right before you start writing your release, spend an hour or two reading your daily paper, paying special attention to stories similar in feel to yours. Immerse yourself in how the pros do it and you’ll be in the right frame of mind to tackle the job! To view professional press releases updated daily, go to: PublicityInsider.com and clíck on the “Press Release Gallery”
About The Author
Bill Stoller, the “Publicity Insider”, has spent two decades as one of America’s top publicists. Now, through his website, eZine and subscription newsletter, Free Publicity: The Newsletter for PR-Hungry Businesses he’s sharing — for the very first time — his secrets of scoring big publicity. For frëe articles, killer publicity tips and much, much more, visit Bill’s exclusive new site: PublicityInsider.com

What are Keywords?
Keywords from a search engine optimization (SEO) stand point are the key -words that are used to optimize your website for better listings on search engines. These are the words or phrases people are typing into the search bar of Google etc. to find websites relating to what information or products they may be looking for. Go to www.bruceclay.com and www.highrankings.com – two great websites where you can learn more about keywords and SEO.

How Do I Find and Choose My Keywords?
To find keywords that people may be using in search terms the first port of call should be the overture keyword selector tool and you can access this tool at http://inventory.overture.com or http://inventory.uk.overture.com. If you want the UK results, here you will find an excellent tool for discovering keywords. All you need to do is type in words or phrases that are going to be related to your website and Overture will show you related searches that include your term and how many times that term was searched in the last month. Now you can get an idea of what keywords you should be including in your domain name.

Please note that search engines don’t like long domain names so try to keep it as short as possible. Other great resources for keywords are:

http://www.wordtracker.com
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
http://www.keyworddiscovery.com

As we all know, all the good domain names have been taken and it’s almost impossible to get one-word domain names these days, so be inventive if you get stuck. I always find it helpful to visit www.dictionary.com and use the thesaurus to come up with names maybe I hadn’t thought of. Now that you are armed with a killer domain name you can go to http://www.umbrellawebsitedesign.co.uk/order/whois/ and chëck its availability.

Try and get the domain name extension of the country your company resides in as it makes it clear where you’re from. I know most people want to get a .com but, if you are in the UK, I believe a better extension would be .co.uk as it shows where you’re from. This will also help in the SERPS. When people are searching for websites in the UK you don’t want to be competing with websites outside of your country if you can help it.

Building a Holding Page and Creating a Site Map
Now that we are sorted with our domain name and hostíng the next step involves creating a holding page and submitting a sitemap to Google. First of all you need to create your holding page. It’s a good idea to create a holding page so your domain can build up some respect with search engines. You don’t want to wait until your website goes live before submitting it to search engines.

Designing a Holding Page
Keep it simple and describe all the services and products you may be offering in your site. Don’t forget to use keyword rich text in your title tag, description tags, and body text. Use the keywords you discovered in the “how to find and choose keywords” section. This is good practice for when you design your website proper, but you have to remember it’s unlikely this page will be viewed by many people. However, this isn’t the purpose of your holding page.

A good idea here would be, if any visitors did visit your site, perhaps they would like to know when your website goes live or maybe they will have questíons. I would therefore suggest you add a simple contact förm asking for their name and email address to notify them when the site will be live or to answer any questíons they may have. You could even use them to do some usability testing and describe in more detail the coming sections. Name it index.html or index.htm and put it in the root folder of your site and upload it to the server.

Creating a Sitemap for Google
A Google sitemap is a XML document that contains information of every page on your website (not to be confused with a sitemap html page on your website). You need to upload this to the root folder of your server so that Google can access it and index your website more quickly and easily. You can create a Google sitemap with very little effort online by going to http://www.sitemapspal.com and following the online instructions. Once you have created your site map you can go to www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ and follow Google’s instructions for adding a site map. You will find this service very easy to use and invaluable in getting your website listed properly on Google. Remember to update your sitemap XML document when your website is finished and every time you make changes so that Google can index your new pages. Doing this now will save you time and effort later.

Now Submit Your Website to the Major Search Engines – Right?
Wrong! It’s a misconception that you need to submit your website to search engines. Please, please don’t pay anyone to do this, as it’s not necessary. (Are you listening all you black hat SEO companies, shame on you). Once you have created a sitemap in Google this is more than enough to get yourself listed in the search engines. The search engines will actually come looking for your website in due course. Engines like Google and Yahoo serve listings to lots of other sites. For more information on this visit http://www.bruceclay.com/searchenginerelationshipchart.htm. The one place you must submit your website is the Open Directory or DMOZ for short as this is where all the major search engines get their directory listings from. For more information on submitting your website to DMOZ visit http://www.dmoz.com/add.html .

Creating a Rough Draft of Your Site
Now its time to start designing your site. Before you go ahead and start creating a website in Dreamweaver you will need to get the layout and design in place first. If you want an easier way to design your site and you are not familiar with Dreamweaver or technically minded, you can always use website builder software to create your website. I would recommend this, if you are just starting out, as this is a quick and simple way to get your website up and running. For information on using website building software visit http://www.umbrellawebsitedesign.co.uk/web_b.html. However, if you want to get your hands dirty, read on.

The Pen is Mightier Than The Mouse
The first draft of your website should be on paper. Illustrate where your are going to put everything on your final page, including images, text and links, and name them for quick reference. This will save you lots of time later on in Dreamweaver. You can even sketch out a sitemap of all the pages in your website showing what page links to what.

Creating a PNG File
Now that you have a rough copy of your layout go ahead and open fireworks or image ready and start creating your site as a png file. Here you can start creating your logo and the graphical elements you plan to use. You can create your navigation and add your menus and text so that you can easily refer back to them once in Dreamweaver. Layout everything as it would look like in a browser. This is a good idea as it’s easy to make changes unlike in Dreamweaver where changes can be time consuming. Go ahead and save your page as a png file.

Well that’s it folks for part one. In part two, I will be creating a site in Dreamweaver, discussing cascading style sheets, usability, accessibility and validating your work to comply with W3G standards.
About The Author
Website design specialist Kevin J. Gallagher works with Umbrella Website Design in the UK.

Before you start any search engine optimization campaign, whether it’s for your site or that belonging to a client, you need to answer the following questíons:

1) What is the overall motivation for optimizing this site? What do I/they hope to achieve? e.g. more sales, more subscribers, more traffíc, more publicity etc.2) What is the time-frame for this project?

3) What is the budget for this project?

4) Who will be responsible for this project? Will it be a joint or solo effort? Will it be run entirely in-house or outsourced?

Answering these questíons will help you to build a framework for your SEO project and establish limitations for the size and scope of the campaign.

Ready: How Search Engine-Compatible is the Site Currently?

Something I find very useful before quoting on any SEO project is to produce what I call a Search Engine Compatibility Review. This is where I carry out a detailed overview and analysis of a site’s search engine compatibility in terms of HTML design, page extensions, link popularity, title and META tags, body text, target keywords, ALT IMG tags, page load time and other design elements that can impact search engine indexing.

I then provide a detailed report to potential clients with recommendations based on my findings. It just helps sort out in my mind what design elements need tweaking to make the site as search engine-friendly as possible. It also helps marketing staff prove to an often stubborn programming department (or vice versa!) that SEO is necessary. You might consider preparing something similar for your site or clients.

Steady: Requirements Gathering

Next, you need to establish the project requirements, so you can tailor the SEO campaign to you or your client’s exact needs. For those of you servicing clients, this information is often required before you are able to quote accurately.

To determine your project requirements, you need to have the following questíons answered:

1) What technology was used to build the site? (i.e. Flash, PHP, frames, Cold Fusion, JavaScrípt, Flat HTML etc)2) What are the file extensions of the pages? (i.e. .htm, .php, .cfm etc)

3) Does the site contain database driven content? If so, will the URLs contain query strings? e.g. www.site.com/longpagename?source=123444fgge3212, (containing “?” symbols), or does the site use parameter workarounds to remove the query strings? (the latter is more search engine friendly).

4) Are there at least 250 words of text on the home page and other pages to be optimized?5) How does the navigation work? Does it use text links or graphical links or JavaScrípt drop-down menus?

6) Approximately how many pages does the site contain? How many of these will be optimized?

7) Does the site have a site map or will it require one? Does the site have an XML sitemap submitted to Google Sitemaps ?

What is the current link popularity of the site?

9) What is the approximate Google PageRank of the site? Would it benefit from link building?

10) Do I have the ability to edit the source code directly? Or will I need to hand-over the optimized code to programmers for integration?

11) Do I have permission to alter the visible content of the site?

12) What are the products/services that the site promotes? (e.g. widgets, mobile phones, hire cars etc.)

13) What are the site’s geographical target markets? Are they global? Country specific? State specific? Town specific?

14) What are the site’s demographic target markets? (e.g. young urban females, working mothers, single parents etc.)

15) What are 20 search keywords or phrases that I think my/my client’s target markets will use to find the site in the search engines?16) Who are my/my client’s major competitors online? What are their URLs? What keywords are they targeting?

17) Who are the stake-holders of this site? How will I report to them?

18) Do I have access to site traffíc logs or statistics to enable me to track visitor activity during the campaign? Specifically, what visitor activity will I be tracking?

19) How do I plan on tracking my or my client’s conversion trends and increased rankings in the search engines?

20) What are my/my client’s expectations for the optimization project? Are they realistic?

Answers to the first 10 questíons above will determine the complexity of optimization required. For example, if the site pages currently have little text on them, you know you’ll need to integrate more text to make the site compatible with search engines and include adequate target keywords. If the site currently uses frames, you will need to rebuild the pages without frames or create special No-Frames tags to make sure the site can be indexed, and so on.

This initial analysis will help you to scope the time and costs involved in advance. For those of you optimizing client sites, obtaining accurate answers to these questíons BEFORE quoting is absolutely crucial. Otherwise you can find yourself in the middle of a project that you have severely under-quoted for.

The remainder of questíons are to establish in advance the who, what, where, when, why and how of the optimization project. This will help you determine the most logical keywords and phrases to target, as well as which search engines to submit the site to.

For those of you optimizing web sites for a living, you might consider developing a questionnaire that you can give clients to complete to ensure you tailor the web site optimization to their exact needs.

Go!

So now you are clear about your motivations for optimizing the site, you know more about the target markets, you know how compatible the existing site is with search engines and how much work is involved in the search engine optimization process. You’re ready to tackle the job.
About The Author
Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College – an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

1. Freshbooks Invoicing and Timesheets
Freshbooks is an online estimating, invoicing, project management and time tracking service that gives your business a professional image, no matter how small. I use it to invoice all my clients online and it can even be set up to automatically bill and debit the credít cards of recurring clients every month. It also has built in staff timesheets and project management tools for online collaboration.

Price: Free for 3 clients or less

2. XML Sitemaps Generator
The XML Sitemap Generator trawls through all levels of your site to generate an XML sitemap. It also gives you a running count of pages, provides a text-based URL líst and a HTML sitemap you can import straight into your site. The online version of the generator is free for sites of less than 500 pages, but there’s also a low-cost script-based version for large sites that can be set up to automatically index your site, upload an updated XML file to your server and ping Google and Yahoo when done.

Price: Free for sites of 500 pages or less

3. Proposal Kit
ProposalKit takes the chore out of creating and tailoring client estimates and proposal contracts. With over 200 pre-designed self-guiding templates ready to fill in the blanks with your company, project/product/service and client information, ProposalKit has already half completed your proposal for you.

Price: From USD 47.00

4. ClickTracks
As far as site analytics goes, the depth and accuracy of data provided by ClickTracks just can’t be beaten, in my opinion. The visual analysis ClickTracks provides is probably its best known feature, with statistical data overlaying actual screenshots of your web site pages. The ability to flag individual visitors or groups of visitors based on unique identifiers (such as all persons who visited page x or all persons who bought product d) provides a level of analysis that other analytical packages can’t compete with.

Price: From USD 79.00 per month
5. AWeber
AWeber is a multiple auto responder and mailing líst management service rolled into one. Members can send an unlimited number of campaigns, follow up messages, and newsletters to an unlimited number of approved opt-ín lists. For newsletter purposes, a wide range of templates are provided, as are free training guides and videos to help you create campaigns.

Price: From USD 19.95 per month

6. JROX
JROX Affilíate Manager software (JAM) is a super powerful affilíate program that includes follow up email tools, email broadcasting, custom URLs and the ability to create up to 10 affilíate downlink levels. It offers affiliates groovy 3d Flash-based graphs and charts displaying their referrals and commissions and an organized marketing tools area for storage of banners, links and promotional materials.

Price: Free for 50 affiliates or less

7. Keyword Discovery
Keyword Discovery is an advanced keyword research and search term suggestion tool produced by Trellian.

Price: From USD 69.95 per month

8. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is free web-based site metrics / analytics software hosted by Google. After you include tracking code on all selected pages of your site, Google collects data regarding visitor activity and then you are able to log into an Analytics interface and view site activity and produce reports.

Price: $0

9) Backlinkwatch.com
Type your URL into Backlink Watch and get complete detailed information about the quality and quantity of backward links pointing to your website. It will show you anchor text, Google Toolbar PageRank, total outbound links on that page and nofollow flag for each of your inbound links available.

Price: $0

10) Jim Boykin’s tools
A collection of 17 free SEO tools developed by Jim Boykin and his staff, including a cache analyzer, Backlink checker, keyword density tool and multiple inbound and outbound link checking tools.

Price: $0

11) Google Webmaster Central
Google Webmaster Central is Google’s one-stop shop for webmaster resources. It contains answers to common questíons about Google crawling and indexing and guidelines for webmasters to follow when publishing their content. It also provides statistics, diagnostics and management of Google’s indexing of your website, including Sitemap submission and reporting.

Price: $0

12) Yahoo! Site Explorer
Yahoo! Site Explorer is Yahoo’s version of Google Webmaster Tools. It allows you to explore all the web pages indexed by Yahoo! Search, view the most popular pages from any site, view a comprehensive site map and find pages that link to that site or any page.

Price: $0

13) Ranks.nl
Ranks.nl is a keyword density and page prominence indicator. Type in a URL and target keywords to determine the page density and prominence for certain keywords within the page text and/or HTML tags.

Price: $0

14) Rex Swain’s Tools
Rex Swain is an independent software developer who has uploaded a range of his custom server tools and demos to his web site. Tools include an RGB color sampler, HTTP Cookie Demo, a HTML sampler and an email form demo.

Price: $0

15) SearchStatus for Firefox
SearchStatus is a toolbar extension for Firefox and Mozilla that allows you to see how any and every website in the world is performing in the search engines.

Price: $0

16) Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel is probably the world’s most popular spreadsheet application. Apart from its powerful formulas for financial reporting, Excel charts and spreadsheets are great for site analytics analysis and sharing, sitemap creation, SEO/PPC campaign reporting and tracking link building campaigns.

Price: Bundled with MS Office from USD 180.00

17) Google Reader
Google Reader is a RSS and XML feed reader that constantly checks your favorite news sites and blogs for new content and presents them to you in one interface. It also allows you to share sites/pages of interest with others.

Price: $0

18) Blogger
Blogger is a popular online blog provider and templating service owned by Google, where you can quickly set up a blog of your own to post thoughts, interact with people, and more.

Price: $0

19) The Lynx Viewer
The Lynx Viewer developed by YellowPipe allows webmasters to see what their pages will look like when viewed with Lynx, a text-mode web browser. This view is very similar to how search engine robots see your site.

Price: $0

20) Basecamp
Basecamp is an online collaboration and project management service designed for staff and clients to manage internal and client projects from multiple locations.

Price: Free for 1 project

So there you have it – 20 of the most popular time-saving tools to help you with your search engine marketing efforts.
About The Author
Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running her own SEO business, Kalena is Director of Studies at Search Engine College – an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.