People ask me all the time why I use social media things like Twitter and Facebook. Well, to get better answers than Google provides.
I, like most people in this world, will use things that work. If they don’t work for me, then I usually stop using them.
When I asked the question, “Does anyone have any favorites for web conferencing like webex, go-to, vyew, adobe connect, etc?” through my Tweetdeck (which feeds my Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin profiles).
Here’s what happened. Continue reading
Do you ever wonder why some sites show up for search terms and others just never come up?
I love this quote by on Hubspot’s blog.
Anne Carelli, Digital Communications Manager for Coke. She said:
“Several years ago, Coke realized that Coke.com is not their home page – it is Google.com, digg.com and YouTube. Take the time to keep abreast of what is showing up for your brand in these new social sites and search engines.”
So how do you dominate for keyword search terms. It’s actually very, very difficult to do but if you want to, you should start with understanding where you are in the first place.
There’s a lot you can learn from a simple free download plugin for Firefox called SEO for Firefox.
Firefox for SEO on Notre Dame Science
After you download this plug-in, do a Google Search for your website. I’m going to use Notre Dame Science as an example. Marissa and I just did this the other day for her site so I’m hoping she doesn’t mind.
Here’s what the SEO tool showed us. Continue reading
While I’m waiting for the answers from my friend, I hooked up Google Analytics to their site.
Setting up Google Analytics
1. You have to have a gmail account. BTW, I love gmail. I switch off Microsoft Outlook in Jan and I won’t be going back. It’s like when I switched from skiing to snowboard. With the flexibility and ease of Gmail, there’s just no going back. And you should also have a Google profile. They are easy to set up and you can link to your websites and other profiles on the web. Check out mine at Don Schindler Google Profile.
I would also recommend that you set up a gmail for your business. I use this gmail account for lots of different pieces like Adwords, Adsense, Analytics, Checkout, etc…because then you don’t have to worry about mixing personal and business accounts.
2. Go to Google Analytics.
Go to Google Analytics
3. Do the whole “Sign Up now” thing.
Google Analytics Sign Up Page
4. Then put in your root website like http://www.yoursite.com/ and your time zone.
Put in the URL of your website
5. Fill out your personal info and select your country.
Put in your Personal Info
6. Agree to their Terms of Service.
7. Then fill out the rest and Google will give you a code. It will look something like this.
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var gaJsHost = ((“https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : “http://www.”);
document.write(unescape(“%3Cscript src='” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”));
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(“UA-7611885-1”);
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script>
Google will give you the code.
8. Then you take this code and put it on every page of your site. This can be done through a footer file or part of your template (as long as it is not inside a frame). Or you will have to put it in manually on every page.
9. Once you’ve put the code in and uploaded the file or all the changed pages onto the site, then click “Continue”
10. Status should change if you’ve set up the code properly. This one doesn’t because I don’t own www.yoursite.com. If yours doesn’t change, then click Edit and then click Check Status on the top right of the page. This will allow you to ping Google and check the status of the page.
Google Analytics Report Page
If you still have problems here, go out to your website and click on “View” in your browser, then select Page Source. Do a search for “google-analytics”. If it doesn’t show up, then you don’t have Analytics on the page and you need to check your code.
That’s basically it. Once it says, your status is OK then you should start seeing visitors. Here’s a look at the dashboard of my friend’s site.
Google Analytics Dashboard Top
Next time, we’ll discuss how to read Google Analytics next time.
This is going to be a short post but I absolutely loved this tool, www.websitegrader.com.
Check it out, use it and then come back and we’ll go through all the cool stuff that is in it.
There’s also another free tool for ranking your website.
Being found on the net is getting harder and harder – you need to have this SEO stuff down.
So here’s the secret. You can’t.
You knew that was coming, didn’t you? But there are ways to push the complaint farther away from your site and out of your search results.
The first thing I would do. Go after that customer, face to face, and see if you can correct what happened. Now some people would say that there are people who are never going to be happy, no matter what you do.
I would disagree and say, “You really don’t know that until you are face-to-face with that person.”
Too many times I’ve seen emails and comments start flaming because when it comes to digital communication it is easy to forget there is another human being on the other end of that discussion. It’s almost like we are flipping mad at our computer and just letting them have it. But once they are in person or on the phone, the anger settles and people can talk in the right TONE to one another.
The other thing to do is to go to those sites that have your complaint and explain your side of things. Tell them how you’ve tried to work this situation out.
But if you can’t fix it, you can out-content them on search results.
If you have only one website on the internet (your singular web presense) on the internet, this is going to be very hard. Because you essentially have only one link or two links that will come up when there is a search for your company.
But if you have multiple web presences…say a YouTube Channel, a Flickr account, a Twitter account, an outside blog or multiple blogs, a facebook page, a myspace page, then you have a chance.
Now what I would do is start pushing lots and lots of content out on the web through these different channels – and there are a heck of a lot of more of them than I mentioned.
Also, don’t do it all at once. Space it out. Get stuff up there at least once a week.
Other things you can do is change your static site frequently. I don’t care if it costs you money because you built a site without a CMS. By not changing your content, it just sits there and Google has no reason to re-index your site.
Get involved in other people’s conversations on their sites. If you are scared of the internet, then talk to someone who understands it and can help you.
The bottom line is get more active on the internet and you can drive them down on the search results.
This is also not a great idea in theory – I’ve done this before with companies. It does work. But make sure you understand this. The same rules that apply to you, also apply to the consumer and that’s why when you step it up – they can as well. So it’s better to just work it out together and not go through this mess.
Good luck. And if anyone else has some ideas on how to do it, let me know. I would love to hear them.
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