Advertising Manager For WordPress is a post from: Mark8t: SEO, SEM, E-Marketing And More

More Goals, More Defined: Before you were only able to track four goals, and only by URL destination. now you can track up to twenty and they added the ability to  set thresholds for Time on Site and Pages per Visit. What does this mean? If you have an e-commerce site you normally would track new registrations, subscriptions, add to cart, and purchases. All four goals would be used.  Now with twenty you could track more  pages (maybe promotions of the day, that then lead to buying). As well, you now could keep track of how many customers spend time searching on your site, reading content, etc. In short, you can easily measure site engagement. Need motre? Google has a good video on Goal Setting.

How Many Mobile Visitors?: It’s easy to forget that there are other mobile devices beyond the iPhone, but there are. Most of them do not run JavaScript when visiting your pages, which mean you could have hundreds of visitors coming from mobile devices you were never accounting for. This is made possible by adding a server side code snippet to your mobile website  (download snippet instructions). Site built in PHP, Perl, JSP and ASPX will be supported. A quick note, this is to replace current JavaScript code on your mobile site. You cannot run the old code and the new one.

Advanced Table Filtering: We have yet to see this in out Analytics account, but it is sure to show up soon enough (we hope). Basically, it allows you to filter results based on conditions without exporting the data.  Until it comes to our account (and yours) you can see it in action here.

Sharing is fun!: You might now be able to modify their dashboards, but if you have a Custom Report you created, you can share by simply sending a URL link to it. A pre-formatted template will automatically be imported to their account. You can also now select which profiles you want to share or hide your Advanced Segments and Custom Reports with if you have multiple users to the same data.

And finally the most exciting: Intelligence and Custom Alerts!: This new change will provide automatic alerts to you via email when any significant change occurs that you define. So for example if your site normally gets 1000 visitors a day, and then you have a new campaign released and suddenly you have 10000 visitors in a day, you get an email the next day, focused solely on his new info, as you have defined. Avinash, has a must read post on the topic.

Google’s Analytics blog will be going into detail on each of these in next couple of weeks. We highly recommend that you add this blog to your reading list. We also suggest you read Avinash’s blog as well. It can provide you wonderful insights into understanding the importance of analytics and looking beyond page views.

Google Analytics Annouces Improvements is a post from: Mark8t: SEO, SEM, E-Marketing And More

Is SEO A Scam? Not If You Know The Facts is a post from: Mark8t: SEO, SEM, E-Marketing And More

Now that you have a brand, you need to know some basics of ” online reputation management”. Google recently had a article about this exact subject and how to address possibly unflattering search results when your name or brand is searched. Some of their advice:

• If a customer writes a negative review of your business, you could ask some of your other customers who are happy with your company to give a fuller picture of your business.
• If a blogger is publishing unflattering photos of you, take some pictures you prefer and publish them in a blog post or two.
• If a newspaper wrote an article about a court case that put you in a negative light, but which was subsequently ruled in your favor, you can ask them to update the article or publish a follow-up article about your exoneration.

All of this is good advice. But how do you keep track of what is being said about you or your brand? Outside of doing a normal Google search everyday, there are many solutions, but the most essential in our view is Google “Special” search, Google Alerts and Twitter feeds.

Google “Special” search
Google now offers you the “option menu”. You should regularly do a search of blogs, forums and reviews. You also need to use what are called advanced operators. There are a couple that are essential for brand management, but the most important will be inurl and the use of the “–” sign. What you want to do is search Google as such: -inurl:www.mysite.com “brand name”. What does this do? It will search for all mentions of your brand, without picking up the pages in your domain. Get to know the advanced operators. It is a free and quick way to see what is in Google’s search index about your brand (or your competition)

Google Alerts
We have covered Google Alerts before, but we can’t stress it enough, especially when using advanced operators we mentioned above. Using Google Alerts will keep you up-to-date in real time about comments related to your brand. It is an essential tool for brand management.

Twitter Feeds
Twitter feeds, are simply a feed of a particular search term. Once you sign in with your Twitter account and do a a search, you have the opportunity to save the search and also subscribe to the “RSS feed for this query”. We recommend you do this for your brand (or competitors). Check it regularly to know what people are saying about you or your brand.

So what do you do with the information?  In our view, silence is not always golden, but you should proceed with caution. Be engaged with your clients and encourage them to share their positive experiences on social networks. The goal is too have positive comments out weigh the negative ones –should they arise. But they need to be genuine. Making fake accounts to post full of hyperbole can quickly smell of fraud (i.e. fake TripAdvisor reviews) if it goes against the “crowd wisdom”. Users are not stupid. Today’s Social Networks can be an important source of Word of Mouth, so it is important to use it carefully. In the end, as with most things, use common sense.

Creating An Online Brand and Reputation Management is a post from: Mark8t: SEO, SEM, E-Marketing And More

WPtouch Mobile Plugin For WordPress is a post from: Mark8t: SEO, SEM, E-Marketing And More

Who is Barry?  Barry doesn’t read TechCrunch or Search Engine Land. He definitely doesn’t read this blog. He gets his tech news from his daily paper, the radio, FOX or CNN. He doesn’t use Gooole Chrome, might be aware of Mozilla, but prefers (and uses) Internet Explorer 7 . He  doesn’t own a website or a domain.  He uses the internet to get information, like the weather, sports scores,  do research online before  buying a new TV or Camera. He might partcipate in a forum or two , visit IMDB, buy stuff from E-Bay or search Craigslist occasionally. A couple of months ago, for fun he created an account at Match.com, and had a couple of dates, but nothing serious. He prefers going to bars.

His sister Claire is about the same age, she uses Facebook (alot), doesn’t really care much for Twitter. She likes to text Barry from her iPhone, which only has a couple of apps. She reads Perez Hilton and TMZ.  She uses her brothers computer for most of her other surfing, which is spent at Youtube,  looking at funny videos. She also uses it to do her homework, and research at Wikipedia. Last, but certainly not least, the words/acronyms  SEO or SEM are three letters that mean absolutely nothing to ethier of them.

So why do Barry or Claire matter? Barry & Claire are your target audience. They are most people’s target audience. They are tech savy, or aware, but aren’t early adopters. They don’t spend hours surfing the web. The web is there mostly for information and entertainment. You need to keep them in mind when you design most websites, choose keywords for campaigns or your meta tags. They don’t care about Google Sidewiki, or the Cannonical tag. They will not watch a video about how to use your site or even subscribe to an RSS feed. They will search on Google, and if you do your job of SEO or SEM right you’ll show up in the first three pages. If not, you don’t exist to them. Its that simple. Everything else is just details.

Now what? Create your own Barry and Claire in your head. Write down their profile. Remember to think average person. Use a family memebr or a friend as a template. You need to remove yourself, from what you are used to: being Mr. or Mrs tech savy. The person your family or friends call for computre problems. Now that you have them in your mind, visit your site. Revise your plans or create a new one. This is the secret to e-marketing success, so use to wisely. Good luck!

The Real Audience: The Average Web User is a post from: Mark8t: SEO, SEM, E-Marketing And More

This past week, Google introduced something called Google Sidewiki. Google Sidewiki is a new feature  added to the Google Toolbar that allows anyone to leave comments about pages as they surf the web. To use Sidewiki, you have to get the latest version of the Google Toolbar for either Internet Explorer or Firefox (Google Chrome isn’t yet supported). Search Engine Land has a great tutorial on the in and outs on using the tool. The real question from marketers/web site owners is  is should they worry? The short answer is no. Here are the reasons why:

1- This is a gadget for the web nerd. The average user will not install or care to install it, as it is no pushed to the toolbar, people need to upgrade themselves.

2- It’s a new gadget, so people are playing right now, but will it continue? Remember SearchWiki, Google Knol, Google Friend Connect, etc. They are basically another project that will have mediocre acceptance.

3- Assuming it does take off, Google is using algorithm to decide the trustworthiness of comments based on how long a profile has been active and how “authoritative” the source is. In that likeness, a drive by smaer is unlikely to get much credence.

4- As a verified owner of a site  (through Google Webmaster tools) the first comment displayed–ahead of all others in the Sidewiki will be yours.

So as you see, there is no reason to fear Google Sidewiki. Truthfully, I think Google keeps missing the mark. It’s a new toy, that will fade into obscurity. To me, what would make Google successful in this sphere is for them to combine Sidewiki with the mothballed Google Notebook, and take the best of  Delicious/ Evernote. If you can create comments for yourself about a page, choose to share them, and keep it in Google Toolbar to be accessed anywhere,  that would be killer.  Right now as Sidewiki stands, its a cute tool, but nothing to fear…yet.

So what is our advice? We recommend you stay clam. This is not a major crisis for you or your SEO/SEM goals. We think it makes sense to add Sidewiki to your Google Toolbar and keep an eye on the comments for your website. We recommend you use Google Webmaster tools, so you have the opportunity to respond to or place official comments on your web page. But for now, we feel you should wait. We don’t feel there will be a long term adoption of this tool that will affect small to medium websites.

Google Sidewiki: Have No Fear…Yet is a post from: Mark8t: SEO, SEM, E-Marketing And More

This solution comes from ProBlogDesign. You can read the dirty details or you can skip to the fix. Here it is:

Take whatever ad code you have, and wrap it in two divs, as shown below:

<div class="nameyourdiv">
<div>
## Ad code here ##
</div>
</div>

Now, add the following to your CSS:

.nameyourdiv, .nameyourdiv div {
margin:0;
padding:0;
}

.nameyourdiv div {
height: 280px;
width: 336px;
background: url(nameyourpic.gif) 10px 10px no-repeat;
}

You have to make 2 changes to the CSS above:

Replace the values of height and width with the height and width values of your advert.
Replace the nameyourpic.gif line with the URL of the image you want to use, relative to the stylesheet’s location (Important – Make your image 20px shorter and 20px thinner. This is a precaution to prevent your ads from being seen under rounded corners.)

Some notes on using this solution. The nameyourdiv and nameyourpic should be to something unique, and should not reference the word “ad” or “advert” anywhere in them. I would also suggest you tell Adblock users why they are seeing the image, but be polite. There is a reason they are blocking ads. Also if you go with an alternate image make sure the size is small, so it does not take a long time to load!

So there you have it, one day we give users and adblocking tool, and the next we show a way to “bypass” it. In case you wonder, there are some draconian workarounds out there, like inhibiting AdBlock users from your site, but to me, this is really undesirable. If someone chooses not to see ads, no script will stop them long term. They’ll just stop visiting your site.

Workaround to Adblock: Get Ads to Adblock Users is a post from: Mark8t: SEO, SEM, E-Marketing And More

We welcome our more adventurous scripters (and users) to modify the code to allow for easier functionality with this code. In the end our view is simple (as we stated before):  ”We know its a matter of time before an AdBlock for Chrome is created (and it has been), so we might as well be there first to find creative ways around it (hence our “fun” script). We support smart marketing, where annoying pop-up and distracting ads are not part of a website. That’s what this blog and our company is about.”

Enjoy the script! Please note it is BETA, so use at your own risk

** Update, we were forgetful to thank Paul Fox for the basic script we used to build this thing. Thanks Paul**

** Updated to version 1.2**
Changes: Better handling of white space, quicker load, more blocks added.

AdBlock Extension For Google Chrome by Mark8t is a post from: Mark8t: SEO, SEM, E-Marketing And More

Can We Talk? Submit Your SEO and E-Marketing Questions is a post from: Mark8t: SEO, SEM, E-Marketing And More