Skill Swap: Become a Better Blogger

Here are my second set of notes from today's Skill Swap, an interactive journalism seminar hosted by the Walter J. Lemke Department of Journalism and the Northwest Arkansas Society of Professional Journalists. Helpful hints for bloggers and website owners/managers.

“Attracting More Readers to your Blog or Website” by Angela Belford, co-owner of the Belford Group

To set up a Google Analytics page, log in to google analytics, add widget. I recommend using the tab “Table.” Bounce words can show you mistakes within websites (like a wrong sourcing number for a product). If creating a website, put keywords in your web address. If you have to choose, buy a keyword url before you buy the company name url, it will create more traffic. If you don’t have to choose, buy your company name website, too and link the two.

Dot com and dot co trump dot net in terms of SEO.

Analytics is a website owner’s crystal ball. A popular free analytics for WordPress is a plug-in for Google Analyticator. You can install StatCounter, which is real-time. Google Analytics requires you to notify them of your need for real-time.

Advantages to studying analytics
-determine content favorites
-find good referral sources (justifies social media use)
-understand your readers (great analytics blog “Occam’s Razor”. He discovered average time your readers will spend on your blog, which can determine how to change the length of your posts.)
-bragging rights?? (build your self-esteem)

Terms
A Bounce rate is when a visitor comes to your site and leaves without going further.
This can be an indicator of health, depending on your purpose. In marketing, the lower the better. In blogging, quick visits are fine if people visit regularly. Measure of a bounce can be spending 30 seconds on page, or not going further than one page, the definition differs by source.

Unique visitor is having cookies determine if someone has come to your site before. This counts by individual device. Visits on a blog are good, but visits on a website are not as important as unique visits.

Which metrics should you look at?
Standard reports: bounce rates and visits (a rookie gets excited about visits, not unique visits). New google analytics differs from the old interface because you can customize the dashboard.
The best metric on analytics is “Behavior,” which has the New vs. Returning; Frequency & Recency and Engagement tabs. It tells you how people are interacting with you.

Other metrics to pay attention to:
Traffic type: how did you get this traffic? which search engine or social media site, etc. Medium is organic search or referral (which is linking to your site).

Visits by Keyword: typing in your name to find your site means you are branding well. In this medium, you have the option to exclude your name.

Visits we Buffered

Unique Visitors by Page

Revenue for branded search - Analytics is a way to show a business the change in visits to website since you started marketing for them and how that translates into their profit. This is ROI candy- a way to tell if your efforts are actually leading to your success (especially monetarily). ecommerce tracking does this combination directly.

Branded Search

Revenue

New vs. Returning has a pivot table option and scroll through options on pie graphs of individual characteristics.
Frequency & Recency how often someone visits site, days between visits, day of last visit.

Engagement

Traffic Sources Overview option to create annotation on why a peak happened; humanizing information.

It can be a disadvantage to your business to grow out of your region when you’ve incorporated NWA into your business name, so I recommend not putting NWA in the name of an ecommerce site. Instead, use “my” or “your” (my belford group, your belford group).


Other suggestions

Any adwords campaigns need to be monitored daily.

Pictures of products should have alt tags with the product number. Pictures of interview subjects should have tags with their name in it so they can google themselves and share with friends and family.

If you have an ecommerce site, you have to get your products registered in google shopping.

Find new key words to include and optimize your client’s service/profit.
Google.com/referral means it’s incoming from something else, any google product, which means it won’t show you the keyword. Wherever you are you can add another dimension to find your keywords.

Blogging
Your title or headline is everything.
To increase your blog traffic, put a number in the title.
Build credibility by writing about your product (don’t hit them over the head with “buy my product, buy my product!!”)

In a social media campaign:
1. branding
2. web
3. social media (share articles from mashable)
4. marketing

During week one of a social media campaign- have at least three twitter status updates, write with keywords, always have a link and plug into socialoomph.com (not hootsuite)
Your three tweets should center on 1. education 2. a trend 3. you should talk to ___ about ___
Have a 2:1 ratio. (Give, give, take. Share, share, it comes back to you.)
If you’re posting 4-5 times a week, that’s great. The main thing is to be consistent with your theme and have a plan.

If you care about your business, you will keep fresh content rolling in your social media pages. Your colors should be consistent across the sites. It should make sense to your average user.

Klout helps you understand your reach on social media. Giving people Klout points is like a social media shoutout.

To build blog followers: write well, tweet about it and tweet links to it, follow other blogs and comment on other blogs with real conversations.


Twitter Resources
Who to follow for SEO articles:
Mitch Joel
Chris Brogan
Mari Smith (Facebook queen)
Gary Vaynerchuck

The hashtag for northwest Arkansas is #NWArk (#NWA is a vulgar rapper).

If you’re a good tweeter, you’ll have more lists to recommend.

Twelo.com is the Twitter yellow pages.
Twelohood: the most followed people in each city. It’s a great way to find followers locally.
Hubspot has awesome marketing information. Websitegrader.com will grade website and option to grade twitter account based on your followers and what city you live in.