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How To Install Google Analytics

Need help Installing Google Analytics? .. follow this step by step guide

We have received quite a few requests from subscribers for a step by step guide on how to install Google Analytics so we thought we would put this together for all our subscriber and visitors, so here it is .. your guide to installing Google Analytics

1. Go to www.google.com and type in “google analytics”

Google will display the follow search results : -

2. Click on the “Sign Up Now” sub link under the main “Google Analytics” link.

3. If you do not have a google account click on “Sign Up Now” on the left hand side

4. Fill in all of your account information and click “I accept Create My Account”

Upon entering your account information the below message will be presented to you. To verify you Google Analytics account check your email account that you have signed up with, you should receive an email from Google. 

5. If you have successfully received the email open it and click on the verification link, highlighted in red below : -

When you have clicked the verify link you will be presented with the following screen : -

6. Click the link as shown above to manage your account profile : -

7. On the following screen select the “Analytics” as shown below in red to enter your Google Analytics account: -

8. Click “Sign Up”

9. Enter the information as shown below, ensure that you enter the correct domain name (the one entered here is www.howtowebsite.co.uk and finally select “Continue”

10. Again enter some further information (contact information) and select “Continue”

11. Have a read through the User Agreement, tick the Yes i agree … selection box and select “Create New Account”

12. The following screen displays the code that has to be entered into EACH and EVERY web page of your website, this is a vitally important step and has to be undertaken to ensure all of your pages appear in your Google Analytics account.

Simply highlight all of the code  in the box provided, right click it and select “Copy”.

Note :I always choose Legacy Tracking Code (urchin.js), however its up to you which selection to make.

13. The next step will involve you manually pasting this bit of code into each page. Again its extremely important that you paste this code immediately before the </body> tag.

14. If you have not uploaded your website yet you will see the below symbol appear (highlighted in red below). This symbol appears when Google cannot detect the code.

15.Once you have uploaded all of your web pages to your server after some time, and do not be alarmed if this doesn’t happen straight away, you will notice that the “alert” symbol will change to a green tick. This means that your Google Analytics code has been successfully detected and is now ready to receive data and track visitors.

16. To view your website visitor tracking stats simply click on the “View Report” link.

And there you have it, if you can see the above screenshot you have successfully installed Google Analytics on your website.

Technorati Tags: Google, Installing Google Analytics, Analytics,  How To, Website

Organising Your Website Folder Structure is simple …

Organising your website folder structure correctly can increase visitors and enhance your on site categorisation of pages.

For the purpose of this mini tutorial you may find it useful to download the following template, as this has a similar folder structure. Download HERE

Note: Click on the images to enlarge if you need to

1. If you have successfully downloaded a template you will see the following (or something similar) when you have unzipped: -

2.Ok, so you have an index.html file, this is your homepage. When website visitors access your website through the homepage this is the first page they will see, this is the first file web browsers (typically Internet Explorer) look for when loading your website.

3.Next you will see there is a folder called ‘images’ and if you look inside this folder, there should be a collection of images and a file called style.css. Depending on which template you download the style.css file will either be in the root (main) folder above or in the folder below (images folder): -

4.Websites are basically a collection of folders organise on a web server. A lot like how you manage your word or excel documents you should organise your website files in a similar way, you should organise your files into logical sub folders.

5. So first step is to obviously unzip your template and then move this newly unzipped folder somewhere on your computer where it safe, i normally save mine into ‘My Documents’.
Currently you will have just one page but once you have learnt how to create multiple pages (see above tutorial) your site will begin to expand in size.

6. To make this easier to understand i am now going to explain how you would organise and structure a website about ‘Fashion’. So i start out with my basic folder: -

So i have my homepage (index.html) and my folder of images.

7. Next i am going to create numerous folders because my website is going to contain information on fashion in general so jeans, shirts, jumpers, shoes and jewellery (ignore the male and female genders for this example).

So now i am going to create 5 separate folders for each category: -

8. To create these separate folders i simply right-clicked on a white space within the folder and selected ‘New Folder’ and renamed the folder to the desired category name e.g. shirts.

9. So now you have your folder structure you can now produce pages for each category, for example in shirts you may have separate landing pages for sweatshirts, long sleeve shirts, short sleeve shirts, t-shirts and polo shirts etc as shown below: -

Notice the folder structure Fashion Website\shirts

Asos.com – an online fashion store organises their content in a similar way, this is the structure of their navigation: -

http://www.asos.com/Men/Long-Sleeve-T-Shirts

ASOS Web Page Structure

In conclusion to effectively organise your website folder structure all you had to do is logically categorise your content, this helps you during development, helps visitors determine where they are on your website and also helps the search engines categorise your content.

Technorati Tags: Website Architecture, Website, Web File Management

10 Blog Traffic Tips

In every bloggers life comes a special day - the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else’’s blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader - you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that’’s about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.

Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.

Top 10 Tips

10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

You don”t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that’’s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger’’s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry - it’’s sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important - it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at blogcarnival.com.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it’’s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it’’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it’’s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have - your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

I hope you enjoyed my list of traffic tips. Everything listed above are techniques I’ve put into place myself for my blogs and have worked for me, however it’’s certainly not a comprehensive list. There are many more things you can do. Finding readers is all about testing to see what works best for you and your audience and I have no doubt if you put your mind to it you will find a balance that works for you.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:

www.BlogMastermind.com

This is a follow on from a previous post i posted regarding: Increasing Sales Using Relationship Marketing

Email Updates

Email Updates should play an integral part in automating your business and website as effectively as possible. Thinking of a way to get your users to leave their details may change the way you market your business online forever (and the only way you marketing online altogether). Attracting visitors to your website is great but if you want them to be a customer for life you need to be able to contact them and entice them with great offerings.

E-Shots / Newsletters

An e-shot otherwise known as a Newsletter is a great piece of marketing and ensures you remain in your customers minds at all time throughout the buying cycle, its a great tool to remind them that you’re still there offering products and services.

Newsletters are commonly sent out on a monthly basis and are used to maintain a professional online presence and gets people to expect your regular communications (which is great for brand awarness and online authority).

Many email marketing providers offer great tracking where you can view an emails open rate, click through rate and bounce rate (a bounce is when your email has not been delivered successfully). 

Newsletters can be personalised and even dynamically created, for example you could segment your database list and have a section of your newsletter to change depending on who opens it, e.g. for women you may display perfume and for men display aftershave (thats just a simple example).  

Broadcast Emails

Broadcast Emails allow you to send out the same email to everybody in your list quickly and very easily, furthermore you can personalise them.

You may be launching a new product, have a special offer running or you may want to share industry or company news with your subscribers.

Using Relationship Marketing and an Autoresponder to Deliver Newsletters

Its well known that you need to make several points of contact before your lead will consider converting.

Therefore you may consider using an autoresponder to deliver a series of emails to warm them up into buying from you.

Let say for example you are selling a training course in I.T. and as an incentive you are offering a free 6 week e-course in return for their contact details. After your subscribers have give you their contact details, on day one you may decide to send them a welcome message, following this after 1 week you may want to start them on the free course, then for the next 6 weeks you send them some free content every week, tutorials, top tips, etc, by this point you have built up a good relationship with your readership and you are now in a better position to convert your subscribers.

Your subscribers will be that pleased with the free e-course they have just received they will be a lot more inclined to hand over some money for the real full length course.

Whats great about an autoresponder is your emails / newsletters don’t have to go out on the first day of every month, they can go out whenever you want them to, they can go out at a set period of time after they have subscribed, meaning not everyone will be receiving the same newsletter at the same time.

What is an Autoresponder?

Allot of people think an auto responder is that email you get back when you email somebody who is on holiday “Sorry i am out of the office and i will get back to you upon my return on the 31st January” or very similar messages to this one.

This isn’t what an autoresponder is exactly. Autoresponders as previously mentioned can be an e-course or contain an attachment.

Email courses or general content delivered through an autoresponder are a great way of building and maintaining relationships.

Furthermore an even better thing about using an autoresponder is that it can automate your marketing. Using the example of the e-course, delivering a course over 6 weeks would require 6 separate pieces of content, therefore you simply create these 6 pieces of content, load them into your auto responder and pre-load the interval sends and the best of it is you only have create this content once and once only.

All your website visitors have to do is opt in to your free course or website updates by leaving their name (preferably their first name) and email address. You can then deliver the course to them and even choose to make personal contact a few weeks down the line.

Autoresponder Software

You can read about this in more detail here but the market leading autoresponder software is called AWeber. This is a great piece of autoresponder software which is widely used and has many satisfied customers, this is the perfect tool for automating your marketing and build long term relationships and at such a low cost its a must have tool to generate leads and build relationships.

A small note ‘Email Deliverability’

A big thing to consider here is email deliverability. AWeber has a 99% deliverability rate, this is an outstanding rate and you will not be able to ascertain this kind of deliverability using your own server and you may be at risk of getting a bad reputation as a spammer if you were to do so, so a word of warning there.

Protecting your online presence is extremely important and if you do not do this it could effect your search engine rankings, therefore you need to ensure your emails are coming from a trusted third party.

How Does AWeber Work?

There is nobody who can explain this better than AWeber themselves. AWeber offer a whole host of excellent Video Tutorials. Starting from scratch where you can learn everything for a quick and easy setup for your first email marketing campaign, includig how to set up your list, add messages and publish a sign up form to your website, its so easy and AWeber make it even easier.

Other tutorials include using free templates for email newsletter and how to build an effective follow up again (this is great!).

Ok so where do i start?

The thing i find with email marketing is to get started ASAP. Say you receive X number of visitors per day on your website, why arent you collecting their contact details?. Your potentially chucking away your chance of making a sale.

The most important thing to do is get started as soon as possible, offer some great content, special offers or an e-course and start collecting details now.

Simply sign up to AWeber for a free test drive, get the code on your website (its very easy - its a simple copy and paste job - all of the code is provided for you) and start collecting names and email addresses.

Once you have registered with AWeber (its completely free) they will give you a little bit of code for your form in which your subscriber will enter their details, if you dont feel comfortable with this feel free to drop me an email and i can help you out.

To try this piece of sofware out for free enter your details below and take a free test drive now.

Many factors are taken into consideration when the search engines; the major ones being Google, Yahoo and MSN rank your website.

One of the most influencing factor are back links.

What Are Back Links?

A back link is when a website links to you. One link from a website to your website is like a vote, and a lot like competition polls, the more votes you get the higher you appear in the result tables, in this case the SERPS (Search Engine Result Pages).

Where Can I Get Back Links From?

This will be covered later on in more detail however the aim is to obtain links from websites that have been around for 5, 6, 7 years; really trusted domain names, possibly links from universities, libraries and government departments, even though obtaining links from places like is difficult to achieve.

OK Where Do I Start?

Start with your competitors. OK lets say i own a Flower Shop and i have just published my sparkling new website, but now i need to generate traffic to my site and increase the presence of it in the search engines.

One of the places to start is your competitors.

A quick search for ‘flower delivery’ in Google reveals that the number 1 position is: http://www.serenataflowers.com/.

To see who is linking to http://www.serenataflowers.com/ (voting for this website) simply type the following command into Google: - 

‘link:http://www.serenataflowers.com’

Don’t just rely on Google, use the same command for MSN and Yahoo. MSN and Yahoo will display alot more back-links than Google. You should use the results for good research, competitor analysis and for generating ideas on how you can obtain links too.

Here you can see that http://www.serenataflowers.com/ has 242 linking to it.

 As you can see one of the back links is from: http://www.marketmarks.com/gifts/help.html.

This is a website about Online Gifts and they offer a link exchange if you link back to them, this is known as reciprocal linking, but nevertheless is one way to get links to your website.

A simple search for ‘flower directory’ displays a list of directories for ‘flower’ related websites where the opportunity to add a link back to your website is given, this is known as directory submission and i will be expanding on this very soon.

Once you have discovered who is linking to your competitors, find out exactly how this occured. Perhaps some evolved from a blog talking about news articles or some of the links may have came from a product or service testimonial (Using Testimonials For Website Visitor Conversion). 

 Your chances of successfully obtaining links are improved when you know exactly why other websites are linking to your competitors.

Furthermore you will also know what approach to use when contacting people to obtain links.

What Should I Say?

Well you may have written an interesting article about product ‘X’ and the website you want a link from may sell this product. You could drop them an email and explain how this article is related to their products and it would be worthwhile linking to it as it offers ‘X’ for your readers - would you consider liking to this?.

Other Methods to Obtain Back Links?

Use Search Engines

Search Google for websites who are actively seeking other website to link to (these are often directories).

Executing a simple search e.g. ‘flowers “add url”‘

Write Great Content

More often that not the links your website will obtain will be natural. By writing a great article about your subject area will encourage other webmasters and bloggers etc to link to you, hence providing link worthy content, using the flower example you may produce an article titled “How To Arrange Flowers”. ‘how to’ and ’list’ articles (e.g. top 5 ways to look after your flowers) are brilliant ways of producing link worthy content.

I will be posting alot more tips on this subject so dont miss out and subscribe to How To Website using RSS or even better email subscription, simply use the subscribe links at the top right hand corner of the page.