1. How to view your site’s data for a specific date range
2. How to compare data from two different time periods

After you watch the video below, feel free to ask questions in the comments below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Comparing current data to the past can show you how your website’s traffic has grown, and – if you look at organic traffic referrals – you can see if your search engine optimization efforts are working.

As always, with Google Analytics it’s important to remember that there’s an AWFUL lot of data to analyze. Don’t let the task overwhelm you – you can learn a lot with only the most basic understanding of the system…so check it out!

Other Analytics 101 blog posts:

What are Traffic Sources?

How to view a geographic map of your website visitors using Google Analytics

What is the difference between visits, visitors, and page views in Google Analytics?

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As a marketer, Google has been very big for me as well. I’ve found that pay-per-click ads on Yahoo and MSN offer slightly lower costs and similar quality to Google, but unfortunately only a small fraction of the traffic.

In terms of SEO, Google simply dwarfs traffic from Yahoo or Bing – heck, even Google image search dwarfs traffic from Yahoo or Bing. I’ve found that Yahoo is bigger than Bing, and that – at best – Yahoo can send about 1/6th the traffic that Google can send. Bing? About a tenth.

While it’s never OK to ignore a potential source of traffic like Bing or Yahoo, it’s been pretty easy to forget about them…until now. A recent email from Yahoo tells me that, while Yahoo and MSN might not merge their PPC ad structures in time for the holidays, they’re definitely going to merge their organic search engines in the next 90 days:

…another key aspect of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance is the transition of Yahoo! organic search result…Assuming our testing continues to yield high quality results, we anticipate that our organic search results will be powered by Bing beginning in the August/September timeframe.

That’s right sports fans, starting in October, SEO is going to be devoted to optimizing for two major search engines Bing (a.k.a. David) and Google (a.k.a. Goliath). With Bing+Yahoo holding a 25% share of the search market, Google is still going to be about three times as important as Bing…but Google is huge. I’ll take a third of Google’s traffic any day.

While I won’t try to predict if Google will maintain their search engine share dominance (I’ve listed some reasons Google will emerge the winner here, and some reasons they won’t here), I’ll tell you one thing I like about Bing better than Google: when Google changes their search algorythm, you find out by looking at your analytics. They don’t give you a warning or a heads-up.

Bing, on the other hand, is kind enough to sending us a notice that things may shift:

If organic search results are an important source of referrals to your website, you’ll want to make sure that you’re prepared for this change:

• Compare your organic search rankings on Yahoo! Search and Bing for the keywords that drive your business, to help determine any potential impact to your traffic and sales
• Review the Bing webmaster tools and optimize your website for the Bing crawler, as Bing results will be displayed for approximately 30%* of overall search query market share after this change”

So, just like the email says, you need to check your rankings on both engines and make sure your site is registered with Bing’s webmaster tools.

Questions?

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1. Good content. Articles, videos, cool pictures, podcasts, etc., all qualify as “content.” If your content is good, you can have success online.
2. Search. Until someone comes up with a better way to find news or specific info, search engine optimization will be a big part of marketing any business or service online.
3. Email marketing. If you can obtain someone’s email address and get their permission to use it, you can open a long-term dialog that will allow you to constantly bring these people back to your website.
4. Video. I know that I listed “video” under content, but I think it’s so fundamental that it deserves it’s own pillar. You’ll see continued investment in video here at Spork as this medium is finally starting to generate real business.
5. Social media (pending). The fifth pillar is probably social media marketing on Facebook, Twitter, etc., but it’s status is pending. Will social be folded into search or email? Hard to say. Perhaps it’s a semantic argument. Still, I’m not ready to declare social as a separate pillar from content, email, or search until it’s proven that social can generate revenue all by itself.

These are the pillars. Unless something tremendous happens, they will be the pillars for the foreseeable future. However, to hear some people tell it, “email is dying.”

I say bullshit. Here’s why:

The studies that pronounce the death of email are all based on the behavior of teens. Facebook’s COO says that, because only 11% of teens are currently using email, it’s not likely to survive.

Seriously? Most teens don’t use email because they don’t need it. Last time I checked, most teens don’t have:

• jobs that require email (if they have a job at all – it’s hard for teens to find a gig right now)
• a social network outside of friends (no colleagues, no co-workers, no casual acquaintances, no meetings to schedule, etc.)

Teens don’t use wrinkle cream or Rogaine either, but that doesn’t mean the vanity industry is somehow in trouble. Email will survive because it’s still the only secure, simple, and easy platform for business communications. While it’s possible that some sort of mini corporate social network could replace a lot of inter-office communication, I don’t see this being an end-all solution for most businesses.

Now, will email use change? Sure – but that’s not news. Things are in constant change.

In fact, if I were on the staff at Facebook, I’d worry less about what unemployed teenagers think about email and a little more about what I could do to avoid the fate of MySpace. When I started working in the Internet marketing industry less than 4 years ago, MySpace was king and Facebook was a quirky network for college kids and Canadians. Now? MySpace is a dead zone and Facebook execs are running around bragging about how smart they are. While there will always be a need for a social network like Facebook, there’s no guarantee this network will be Facebook. It’s INFINITELY more likely that Facebook will be replaced by some new fad than it is to see email disappear.

No more email? Come on.

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Here is my list of recommended reading for WordPress designers, developers, and site owners:

For Everyone

ProBlogger – Don’t let all the self-promotional “how I learned to make a million dollars” stuff fool you – this guy is for real. If you want to take blogging as seriously as you would any business endeavor, read his blog religiously. If you’re new to blogging (or if you really want to become an expert), try reading all the posts in his “31 days to building a better blog” category. It’s an excellent list of tips and ideas for everyone.

Daily Blog Tips – The guy behind this site is a little younger than me and got started later than I did, yet he’s wildly more successful (or at least it seems so). Despite my jealousy, this is another blogger I follow very closely.

Wordpress Hacks – It’s a good read for anyone who is ready to take their relationship with WP to the next level. If you’re thinking about getting a little more into things, this is a good place to start introducing yourself to more advanced concepts and topics.

For Designers and Developers

These are resources that designers and developers will find interesting. My chops as a designer are poor – I can NOT design a good looking website without help – so the designer blogs might be more “beginner oriented.” As for WordPress development, I’m definitely above average and these blogs are part of the reason.

Zemalf.com – If you’re looking for great info on what an .htaccess file is and what it should do, or if you need help with speeding up your WordPress install, this site has some great resources. I’m a regular reader.

Pro Blog Design – Always a nice place to find cool Wordpress design ideas as well as keep pace with the latest styles.

WP Candy – A little bit of everything, it’s one of those sites I check on every week or so.

Justin Tadlock’s blog – This is a great source for insights into the WP development community, and he also publishes some great plugins and free guides too.

Sucuri.net blog – If you want to lose sleep at night, become a regular reader. I love the fact this company blogs about the latest security threats, and their free tools have helped me more than once. However, I’m always nervous when I see they’ve got a new post. Ignorance is bliss, and you’ve been warned.

Six Revisions – Info for designers and developers on all platforms – great place to find ideas.

Design Shack – It seems like cheating to subscribe to this blog, because all they do is re-post other blogs. However, they only re-post good stuff. I’m a regular reader.

This is my main list. I’ve found lots and lots of sites over the last 3+ years that I’ve worked with WordPress, and I’m sure I’ve missed a few worthy blogs. If you have a blog devoted to WordPress or blogging in general, please submit a link below.

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Akismet (should be installed automatically) – This is a plugin that every WP install should come with. If it doesn’t, add it ASAP to prevent comment spam.

All-in-one SEO Pack – This is a great plugin. I’m not sure if it’s the very best – I’ve read some reviews of other plugins – but I think it does everything a WP SEO plugin needs to do, and the developers are always improving this one, so it’s the SEO plugin we use.

(WP) Antivirus – This is a must-have for determining if your WordPress templates have been modified without your knowledge. It scans daily and will alert you if there’s a change.

Backup Buddy – This is a premium plugin I’ve just found that’s worth a look. Backups run automatically, and you can choose to backup the database or the entire install. There’s also an FTP function that will store the backups on a different server. If you just need database backups, WP DB Backup is a good, free alternative.

FD Feedburner – I think Feedburner might not be the *best* solution for offering blog readers an email subscription option, but it’s very good, and the tracking features are nice.

Google XML Sitemaps – This is another plugin that may not be the best option, but I’m comfortable with the way it works and haven’t had any problems.

Google Analyticator – This is a great plugin that’s a significant upgrade over cutting and pasting Google analytics into the footer of your site.

Gravity Forms – This is a premium plugin that I endorse 100% – it’s far and away the best WordPress form plugin available.

Login Lockdown – This will protect your WordPress install from so-called “dictionary attacks.” It’s a prudent security measure.

Use Google Libraries – This is one that I’ve just started using because it improves page load speed. Rather than using locally-stored copies of common javascript like jquery, this plugin tells your visitor to pull the javascript from Google’s servers (which are as fast as any online).

Vipers Video Quicktags – I’m not wild about the fact this plugin requires it’s own javascript file – even on pages that don’t feature an embedded video – but it’s incredibly easy to use, so I still recommend it.

WordPress Automatic Upgrade – This is a nice alternative to the native WP upgrade system.

WP-Optimize – There are a few plugins that optimize a WordPress database, and some of them might be a better solution. This one works very well, however, and it’s incredibly simple.

W3 Total Cache – I’m slowly transitioning all the sites I manage from WP Super Cache to this faster, better, and more comprehensive plugin. WP Super Cache is great, but this is better, and it even plays well with GoDaddy hosting (and that’s saying something). It might be a little intimidating because of all the options, but it’s worth diving in.

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No – really?

Of course a domain is worth what whatever two parties can agree upon. However, an independent appraisal should always be the starting point for a negotiation. Otherwise, one of the parties is getting taken advantage of.

Domains Are Not Commodities

Once a domain is registered, it takes on a new value. Generally speaking, that value is based on three factors:

• Revenue the domain currently generates
• Any inherent search or brand value of the name itself
• Any speculative value the domain may have

When it’s time to determine how these factors combine to come up with a price, the most accurate way to determine a domain’s value is to auction that domain name in an open marketplace. Auctions – provided that they have a sufficient number of potential buyers and sellers – determine the market value of any non-commodity.

Domains and fish have a lot in common - both are often auctioned off to the highest bidder.

This Wikimedia Commons image is from the user Chris 73 and is freely available at http://commons.wikimedia.org.

So what about situations where a domain isn’t available via auction? Without an open marketplace, it’s very difficult to determine the true value…which is where a professional appraisal comes in. Domain appraisals conducted by companies like Sedo and Moniker are useful in that they can be a good starting place for a negotiation. These companies use a combination of recent auction values, experience, and revenue data provided by the seller to arrive at an estimated value.

With an independent appraisal in hand, you have a starting point for any domain sale or purchase. Without one, you’re pulling numbers out of thin air. When a seller doesn’t want to work from an appraised value, that should be flashing red indicator that the seller wants more than market value.

Check Your Options Before Buying Or Selling Any Domain

The other thing to keep in mind when you investigate buying or selling a domain is to look at plausible alternatives. While no two domain names are the same, there are many international domain auctions held throughout the year. If a buyer and seller can’t agree on a price, there are alternatives for both parties.

Finally, be extremely wary of any domain owner who mandates a “minimum bid” before they will discuss selling a domain. I’ve found that many of these domains are unreasonably high-priced. For the “minimum asking price” there are a number of high-quality alternatives – any one of which will fit most businesses with a little creativity.

Questions? Thoughts?

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Another old trick is to leverage a social or charitable cause to help generate business. It’s a time-honored tradition, and despite the blatant capitalism implicit in this sort of tactic, people tend to receive it pretty well.

But what about a mashup? Is it possible to combine these two tricks to form some sort of “super trick?” In a word, yes.

Meet Marilyn’s on Monroe

I’ve never set foot in Toledo, Ohio. I’ve never been to this “establishment” before, yet somehow I know about this business:

This Ohio strip club is an inspiration to marketers everywhere. Image copyright WUPW

The reason? They’ve been promoting a charitable event called “Lap Dances for Northwestern Ohio” that made the front page of CNN.com. In an effort to help tornado victims, this club is donating all their cover charges to charity on a particular day.

By itself, this story is a funny little tidbit. A good idea that should be acknowledged regardless of your personal feelings about a) the sincerity of their efforts or b) the concept itself.

However, I think the REAL inspiration is that they’ve done this same exact gimmick once before!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Why is it inspiring to see someone pulling the same trick twice? Because it worked twice! It’s either a very good trick, or a slow news day on CNN.com. Either way, Marilyn’s has won.

Here are my take-aways for business owners everywhere:

1. Standard old marketing gimmicks aren’t fun or exciting, but they work. I see this all the time in my daily work – people become so focused on the newest concept or idea that they become unwilling to consider the most basic of concepts, i.e. let’s use a charity and a pretty face to promote our business.

2. Originality can be over-rated. I’m not saying that we should just copy other people’s ideas or efforts – that’s not good marketing. However, it’s not very wise to focus so much on originality that we start eliminating proven concepts. The best marketing ideas incorporate proven concepts with your individual business.

3. Step outside your industry for ideas. When I consult with clients, I often look across industries to find inspiration. A concept or idea that works well in automotive marketing can also work just as well in restaurant marketing, provided of course we adjust the concept to fit the client.

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The 007 logo image above is a trademark of MGM

In honor of my appreciation for 007, I’ve come up with a list of seven things James Bond can teach all of us about SEO:

1. Our mission isn’t just about us. Bond’s priorities are “Queen and country” – everything he does is for England. There’s a very direct corollary in SEO – everything you do for the search engines is REALLY about the user. Making your content easier to crawl, decreasing website load times, and being careful about whom you link to are all SEO best practices because they improve the experience of the user.

2. Protocol is important. Code names, passwords, and military etiquette are a regular part of Bond’s work. SEO is similar in that it is most successful when you follow a very strict set of on-site SEO rules:

• Make all of your content “crawlable” – Beware of gee-whiz fancy Javascript and Flash website elements because they’re not always easy for search engine spiders to understand.
• HTML title tags are really, really important – Read my Two Minute Guide to SEO title tags for a quick how-to.
• Standard HTML heirarchy and clean code works. Search engines like clean code, and they like structure. Every page of your website should have h1 and h2 header tags, clearly defined paragraphs of text, and lists should be used whenever appropriate.

3. Emphasize your point clearly and unequivocally. When Bond makes a point, it’s usually crystal clear. In SEO, this means that the topic and main keywords of each webpage should be obvious. That way, search engines won’t have to “guess” about the topic of your page and your readers will know if they’ve found the content they’re looking for immediately.

Could Bond have defeated Dr. No without the help of this beauty?

4. You need a network of strong relationships. While it might seem like Bond is a one-man wrecking crew, the truth is that he relies upon strong international relationships to accomplish his goals. Just like Bond would be nowhere without local contacts and pretty girls with insider access, SEO is as much about building relationships as it is anything else. Relationships, you see, help you build links and promote content – they’re essential to success.

5. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes of a successful mission. Bond usually saves the day because of his hand-to-hand skills, his driving skills, or his marksmanship. However, all of these skills require HOURS of effort to hone. In SEO, hours and hours of work go into achieving a top ranking.

6. Eventually, the “bad guys” get what’s coming to them. It seems like every day there is some trick that the “bad guys” use to unfairly manipulate search engine results. These black-hat tactics might work for a while, but just look the bad guy always dies in the end of every Bond flick, black hat SEO “tricks” eventually fail.

7. Working with the opposition sometimes makes sense. How many times has Bond partnered up with the KGB to defeat one of his enemies? Sometimes, working with a competitor is the easiest way to boost both of your website’s search rankings.

Bonus: SEOs get the girl

My lovely wife Sara could totally be a Bond girl…but she’s mine. So no dice.

My wife Sara, a skilled website content writer.

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In other words, if you want to build a small, meaningful audience on Twitter that you connect with regularly, then this Twitter advice is for you.

1. I use Hootsuite. When it comes to actual Tweeting, I don’t like using Twitter.com. It’s not very fast and it doesn’t offer me the same amount of info at a glance that I get from Hootsuite.

Hoostsuite also allows me to automatically shrink URLs, makes RT’s and DM’s as easy as a click, I can follow my conversations without a lot of effort, and I can even schedule my Tweets for peak times when I know people are active. There are also some cool click stats you can look at, and you can also use Hootsuite to manage multiple profiles. Since I manage @sporkmarketing, @tundrahq, and a couple of client profiles, this is a great feature that saves me a ton of time.

2. I use Twitter lists to prioritize what I’m going to read. In Hootsuite, you can create a list of Tweeple (that’s Twitter-speak for “people”) that you can display separately. All of my accounts have a private “faves” list that I’ve made strictly for my own time-saving purposes. My faves lists are made up of people whose tweets I really want to read – the rest I read when I have time.

3. I try to adhere to the 19-20 rule. There’s a Twitter rule that someone smarter than me came up with called 19-20. For every 20 tweets you publish, 19 of them are re-tweets (RTs). Just like the best conversationalists listen much more than they talk, the best Tweeters RT a LOT.

4. I only follow people who are relevant to my niche. Frankly, I think this is the key to Twitter.

I would compare Twitter to a really big University campus. While there are some people who will become known campus-wide, most of us will only be known to a specific sub-set. Would you rather try and be one of the people that is known campus-wide, or would you rather be viewed as the person in your immediate group of friends?

While both have their benefits, I think it’s much easier to be known in a small group than it is to try and be known worldwide. Therefore, I focus my Twitter profiles on a specific topic area or relationship and really don’t bother with following or engaging people who are outside those bounds. I might be making a mistake in this, but I don’t think so.

5. I only follow quality profiles. Aside from relevance, I only follow people when:

• They have a complete profile on Twitter. No picture? No chance. No website? Probably not going to follow that person either.
• Their profile shows RTs. When someone follows me, I always look at that person’s profile. Do they have RTs? If the answer is no, they’re probably not listening…so why I would follow them?
• They’re not spammers. If the last Tweet was “Learn how you can make $418 dollars a day from home LINK” I’m out.

6. I’ve used SponsoredTweets with some good results. SponsoredTweets is an advertising system that allows you to pay specific people to Tweet out your message. You can specify the time of day the Tweet goes out, and you can review the language of the Tweet to make sure it’s OK. The goals are to generate clicks and to get people to RT your sponsored message freely. SponsoredTweets has worked best for me when I focused on Tweeting out content that was inherently conversational. It’s pretty inexpensive and definitely worth testing if you’re trying to do business on Twitter.

7. I Tweet like crazy at events. I attended the New York Auto Show earlier this year as well as the 8th Digital Dealer Conference. At both places, I spent significant time Tweeting and RT’ing about the event on my phone. This usually helps me gain followers and generates some relationships – just make sure you use the appropriate event-specific hashtag when you Tweet.

8. Jokes get RT’d pretty nicely. A good joke can be RT’d dozens of times, and it’s a great way to introduce your profile to someone who has never heard of you. If you can be funny in less than 100 characters, you will build a following on Twitter.

9. I try to Tweet in 100 characters or less. If you want people to RT you, make it easy for them: short tweets don’t require editing to be RT’d.

10. I Tweet at people directly on a limited basis. If I want to get someone’s attention on Twitter, I will Tweet directly at them (not direct message, mind you, but a public tweet that’s directed towards someone). Since we all monitor our mentions closely, Tweeting at someone is a great way to get their attention. However, there are some criteria: If you do it too often, you become the “Tweep who cried wolf” and are ignored. If you do it out of context and/or without building a relationship, you get un-followed.

Bottom Line: I’ve learned these rules by trial and error, by reading others recommendations, and by listening to my wife @saralancaster who is a very successful Tweeter. As I said, I’m not a superstar…but I have had some success building relationships and doing some business on Twitter, and I really don’t spend that much time working on it (1-2 hours per week).

Comments? Suggestions?

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Here’s why I recommend using the more tag in WordPress and how it works:

WHY You Should Use The More Tag

The more tag is a way for you to keep from confusing search engines about which pages to add to their index. For example, let’s say we have two blogs. Blog A uses the more tag in every post, so when we visit Blog A we only see blog post snippets (or intros) on the homepage.

Blog A versus Blog B.

Blog B, on the other hand, does not use the more tag, so the home page shows each blog post in it’s entirety. Here’s why Blog B is making things more difficult for search engines:

1. Search engines generally don’t like long pages with lots of text. There are no hard and fast rules, but most of the work I’ve seen shows that 1100-1200 words is the longest a page should be (with some exceptions of course).

If a page gets much longer than 1200 words, most readers will tune out and stop reading. Since Google is 100% dedicated to providing the best possible user experience (and since Bing and Yahoo have copied them), really long pages of text generally don’t do well in search engine results.

In other words, a blog homepage with 10 full-length blog posts probably isn’t getting as much search engine traffic as it could be.

2. Search engines are easily confused when they see the same text in two places. Blog A only shows snippets of each blog post on the homepage. When Google/Bing/Yahoo shows up, it’s easy for them to figure out where each post “lives” and add each post to the index.

Blog B, on the other hand, has the full text of each blog post on both the homepage and the post page. When Google/Bing/Yahoo finds duplicate content, they usually index the page with more authority…which is the homepage. As a result, each individual post page may be ignored.

The problem here is that, as you add new blog posts, your old posts disappear from the homepage. In the eyes of Google/Bing/Yahoo, that text is then gone forever…so Google/Bing/Yahoo removes that old text from their index and you don’t get free search engine traffic on some or all of your old posts.

NOTE: This isn’t a concrete phenomenon. Blogs with a lot of comment activity can get away with posting the full content to the homepage without indexing problems. Like a lot of SEO tips and advice, this is a best practice – not a rule.

How To Use The WordPress More Tag

I slapped together a quick screen cast that explains the how and why in a little bit of detail. It’s available in HD, so if you can’t read/see what I’m talking about, be sure to increase the video resolution.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Also, here’s a crude blow-up image of the “more” tag icon in the WordPress visual editor:

Where you can find the "more" tag icon in your visual editor.

Questions? If you’re new to WordPress or business blogging in general, be sure to check out these other posts:

• What is a blog ping list?
• Business blogging tip – link to your site in every post
• Essential WordPress plugins for small business

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