Choosing a domain name

If you already have a domain name, this section might not be very useful to you. Then again, knowing the gist of why a domain helps SEO won’t hurt. If you’re still trying to choose the best domain name for your business or project, don’t give up.
It’s becoming very difficult to find the URL you want that is not registered yet. I’ve found that the best domain ends with a .com but there are successful websites nowadays that end with every possibility you might think of.
Contrary to popular belief, the keywords that you’re aiming for don’t really have to be in the domain name, so you can feel free to choose a name which is not directly related to your subject matter.
After all, it’s all about the way you run your site, and in terms of SEO it doesn’t make much of a difference if the content of your website is relevant to the keywords you’re trying to rank for.
It is also good to know that some sources say that having your website registered for at least a year helps. As your domain ages it gets more attention from Google.
The length of your URL is another factor that should be given some attention, as it is suggested that the length of the URL will be better if it’s 8 letters or less.

Choosing the best keywords

Now that you have chosen a domain name, you can start researching the best keywords for your website. By best I mean the ideal set of words to use in your site’s content to make it more appealing to search engines.
This helps search engines get to know your website better, and consequently show it as in results which match your target users’ searches.
Start off by finding what keywords your competitors use and what people are more likely to search for when looking for sites like yours.
Next, gather the top 10 keywords and start including them in the text of your website. Remember to add some of your main keywords to some article headlines to make them more prominent.
But don’t overdo it and duplicate a lot of content just to stuff different keywords in. Google will realise that you’re trying to cheat and won’t be very willing to show your content to those searching for it.

Get your content to work for you

Now that you know what keywords are best to use on your website, it’s time to getting them to work for you. The best way to start is to add them to title tags, alt tags, meta descriptions and in H1 tags.
Contrary to popular perception, content length doesn’t really matter as long as it’s original content. So don’t lose sleep over whether the text on your pages is is 500, 1000 or 2000 words long, even though quite a few sources say that the ideal is to have around 1500 words per page. It’s better to have less content that makes sense in the context of your site than to have a lot of content that’s rubbish just for the sake of it.
Other factors that might need some attention include page speed and image optimisation, finding and fixing broken links, grammar and spelling, HTML errors, W3C validation, and designing a user-friendly layout.

Bringing your website to life

User experience is another vital factor that determines how much traffic you can get to your website. You cannot just have a website designed and leave it there doing nothing. It’s best to update it regularly to show Google that it’s still active and might be useful to users. It’s also important to have a contact us page that is clear and easy to understand and use, maybe with a form and a map so users can easily find you and get in touch if they need to.
Google also promotes mobile-friendly websites on searches originating from mobile devices. Having a mobile version of your site (or a responsive website that adapts itself automatically to mobile devices) will therefore increase your chances of winning traffic from mobile searches.
Other relevant technical factors include the presence of a sitemap, using Google Analytics & Webmaster tools to improve performance, easy navigation, and including terms of use and privacy policy pages.
The presence of reviews, testimonials and comments on your website help perception too, but this all depends on the nature of your business.nIf you’re working on a link building (and/or guest posting) exercise to improve your chances of being ranked higher on search engines you have to ensure that you’re only getting links from high quality sites that are relevant to your industry.

Engaging users through social media

Your presence on different social media is considered to be as important as having a website. There are a lot of platforms to choose from to engage users, but you have to decide on which are the best ones for your business.
For example, it doesn’t make sense to use LinkedIn if your target audience aren’t business people. Google gives a lot of attention to businesses that have a significant amount of tweets, number of Facebook likes and shares on Facebook, Pinterest pins and other mentions and interactions.
A lot of hype was made about whether or not Google+ ultimately makes any difference or not for SEO. Lately, Google released an announcement saying they are going to split Google+ into different sections so that it will make much more sense to get some SEO relevance from it.
As you may have noticed this topic is broader than expected and might be quite a lot to handle. If you decide that you need some extra advice, we’ll be glad to help you along with the process.
As you go along be careful you don’t opt for shortcuts to optimise your website as Google will penalise your website and it might be difficult to earn its trust back.
Remember that SEO might take a lot of time to eventually work and get you to the top of results, so roll your sleeves and start working on it now.

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1. Set up

It’s extremely easy to set everything up and get started. Simply sign into your Google account and head over to Analytics. What you’ll need to do is go to the Admin panel and click “Add account”. From there on in you just fill in some very basic information about your website to receive your Tracking ID. After that you’re ready to install your HTML tracking code into the source code of your website. This code is essentially how Google Analytics taps into and captures your website’s usage statistics.
Now that you’re all set up, here are the most important metrics simplified and explained.

2. Users & Sessions

Find these metrics through Audience > Overview.

The explanation

The visitor count is something you will keep a close eye on because it helps you see if you’re increasing traffic to your website. As Google defines it, ‘The Users metric shows how many unique users viewed or interacted with your content within a specific date range.’ On the other hand, one single session can contain multiple pageviews, events, social interactions, and ecommerce transactions.

The interpretation

The fewer uniques you see as compared with your total visitation (sessions), the more loyal your audience is. So, if the number of visitations is a lot higher than the number of uniques it means that your users are visiting more pages, interacting more, and there’s more chance that they will decide to choose your services or make a purchase from your website.
While you want to build a loyal following, getting new people to your website is the way to grow your presence. Make sure you get maximum exposure to attract more uniques, by focusing on the right keywords, getting active on social media, and promoting your content.

3. Bounce Rate and Average Visit Duration

Find these metrics through Audience > Overview.

The explanation

These are actually two metrics, but they’re related. Bounce rate is the percentage of users who leave immediately after seeing one page. Average visit duration is the the amount of time spent on the site. A low bounce rate and high visit duration tells you that people find your website useful and valuable.

The interpretation

The reality is not everyone is going to like your content. The bounce rate is essentially the percentage of people who leave your website from the same page they entered without any interaction with the page. For a visitor to be measured in the Bounce Rate they must have come to your website, only looked at the one page, and then left your website immediately.
Ideally you want to keep this percentage low. If you think the bounce rate is high, take a look at the average time spent, exit pages, and where visitors are clicking (see In-Page Analytics below).
According to Neil Patel, these are the benchmark averages for bounce rates:
If you would like to lower your bounce rate and increase the time users spend on you website, you have to make sure that you enhance the quality of your content, have strong opening paragraphs and make sure that users don’t have to wait too long for your website to load.

4. Browser & OS

Find these metrics through Audience > Technology > Browser & OS (for cross browser usability).
Every website should look good on every type of browser, operating system and different screen sizes. If you monitor these metrics well, you can make various changes on how your website appears online. The ‘Browser & OS’ is a very useful metric that will give you an indication of what is the most popular browser that users are using to access your site. This is great for cross-browser usability, because by knowing the most popular browser with your users, you can make sure that your website looks great on that particular browser.

5. Mobile

Find these metrics through Audience > Mobile > Overview (for responsive websites – decisions).
It is also crucial to know how many visitors are accessing your site through mobile devices. As time goes by, you are going to experience a rise in visitors that access your website through mobile devices, so you’d better prepare to optimise your site to a responsive one if it still isn’t.

6. Traffic Sources

Find these metrics through Acquisition > Overview.
Find these metrics through Acquisition > All Traffic.
The ‘All Traffic’ report details how many people visited your site and where that they came from. Traffic sources can be divided into 5 channels as explained below:

Direct –  Typed your URL in the browser.

Social – Visits that came through social media platforms.

Paid Search – Visits that are tracked through pre-defined campaigns.

Referral – Clicked on a link from another website that linked back to you.

Organic Search – Found your website using a search engine (i.e.Google).

Another handy feature here is that it helps track where your content is online. You’ll also notice social networks on your list of referrers which is great for analysing which social network brings in the most visitors. Your business needs an effective keyword strategy and its goal should be to show up on the first search page for specific keywords associated with your business. This goal is important because usually users never scroll beyond the first page of search results.

7. Keywords

Find these metrics through Acquisition > Keywords (Paid & Organic).
The Keywords (Paid & Organic) report shows what keywords visitors used to find your website. This report will help you measure the success of your search engine optimisation campaign. You want to make sure that the keywords that appear in this report are the ones you want to be associated with you and your content.

8. Popular pages

Find these metrics through Behaviour > Site Content > All pages.
Here is where you evaluate which content is the most popular on your website. Take a look and see which pages get the most views and how long people are staying on the page. After a while of publishing content you’ll notice patterns and see which posts perform better.
Remember it’s about publishing content your audience wants to read, so if a particular style of writing appears to getting more views, stick to that style.

9. Landing & Exit Pages

Find this metric through Content > Site Content > Landing Pages.
Find this metric through Content > Site Content > Exit Pages.
We’ve looked at how people are finding your site, but this report tells us the exact pages visitors are landing on. Knowing how visitors are entering your site is key for creating a successful sales funnel. Are your top landing pages optimised to convert leads? Do they have calls to action? They should because having an engaging CTA on a popular landing page will improve your website’s lead generation metrics.
It’s very useful to get to know what is sending your visitors away. The Exit Page report will show us what pages visitors are leaving the site from. Take a close look at your top ten pages and make sure they’re the pages you want people to be leaving your site from. For example you want users to exit from thank you pages, so that you will know that they subscribed. On the other hand, you don’t want users to exit from your homepage, because that simply means that users weren’t interested to continue viewing other pages.

10. In-Page Analytics

Find these metrics through Behaviour > In-Page Analytics.
You can also use In-Page Analytics to see how users really interact with web pages. To make analysis easier, Google Analytics includes a variety of charts to display information just as you want to see it. Here you’ll be presented with a map that lets you view where your visitors are clicking. This feature helps find out how your visitors are interacting with your website.
For instance, if you’ve got a button nobody is clicking on, you might want to change the design or consider a different value proposition and call to action. Another benefit is to find out how many people scroll below the fold and read the content at the bottom.
There you have it!
Keep in mind that the online marketing for your business is a moving target. You will never reach a point where your website is finished. To keep your focus on an ever-improving bottom line, you must change what isn’t working and enhance what is. Knowledge is power, after all, so stay informed by checking in regularly on some of the most important numbers concerning your business.

The post The beginner's guide to monitoring the right metrics on Google Analytics appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

1) Evoke interest with your title

Your title is the first thing that gets read on your blog post, so you have to make sure that it’s clear and delivers a glimpse of what your blog post is about (see 100 great ideas here). It has to immediately set the mind of the reader so they’ll decide if they should read the article or not. That’s why your title serves one goal; grab attention so people feel compelled to read your opening.

2) Grab attention in the first 3 to 4 sentences

If you get people to read you first 3 to 4 sentences, they’re more likely to read your entire article. Delivering a sense of urgency is  crucial at this point so promising some benefits is always a great start. That said, the point of your opening is to get people to read the rest of the blog post… and that’s it. Whatever approach you take, just ensure that your first 3 to 4 sentences have to be compelling and evoke interest.

3) Visual appearance

How can I make my readers keep coming back for more? The visual appearance is crucial, so these are some tips to attract your readers’ attention:
– Fewer characters per line, so that it won’t take too long to read and the readers will feel that they are reading it very fast. A half width image shortens the line length of the opening and will make it easier to read.
– Always try to include at least one image; it will surely increase your readership.
– Choose a font that is clear enough to read.

4) Emotional connection

If you can understand and implement the psychology of connecting emotionally with your readers, then your website can keep driving traffic. Write unique content which readers will think about after reading it. That way they will come back for more and be more likely to click on a link to your blog the next time on of their friends shares it. When people get emotional, they pay attention. They’re also more likely to take action after being put into an emotional state.

5) Give readers practical advice that is easy to implement

One of the main goals of writing an article is to get people to take action, and that should be done religiously. Readers will look for step-by-step methods and how-to sections. Make sure you explain clearly and give practical, easy to implement advice. Get people results, and they’ll remember you forever. As an added bonus, practically useful content is more viral than other types of content.

6) Optimise your blog post for search engines

What’s the point of writing blog posts that no one reads? Optimising your articles for search engines will help the article rank higher on search engine results and be visible to people searching about the related subject. Also, make sure that you have someone who can proofread your article and check for spelling and grammar.
It’s important to utilise keywords throughout your post:
– Title, page name and URL
– Headings and subheadings
– Title tags and meta descriptions
– General content
– Anchor text (links to other related pages on your site)
Make sure that you have a mobile friendly website, so that every reader using a mobile device will have it well displayed and clear to read.

7) Check your word count

There’s basically no rule on how much words one should write in a blog post. However, after doing some research I found that the ideal length of an article is between 1000 and 1500 words, and if your goal is search engine traffic, longer is better. Neil Patel’s blog posts can go up to 40,000 words… But it depends, focusing on blog word count might not be as important as you think. Some topics take 100 words to explain, others take 1000.

8) Inspirational conclusions

Your conclusion is as significant as your opening – here’s where you close out your article with another call to action. Buy, subscribe, call, email and share are some examples of calls to action you can include. The image below is a great example of different ways to close an article with a small simple form to subscribe, sharing buttons, other article recommendations and a commenting system.

To write a great blog post you need to know about the subject and polish your writing skills. And most of all, you need to sneak into the heads of your readers and potential clients. But magic will happen when you truly care about the subject you’re writing and your readers. Understand what they’re trying to achieve and know what they’re struggling with so that you can help them with the right advice.
You can’t expect to have a lot of traffic immediately after writing your first blog post. It takes time, be patient and your traffic will multiply over time.
If you keep up the good work, your social shares and comments will skyrocket. Other bloggers will start linking to your content. And most importantly, an endless stream of quality leads will flow to you.

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