For example, when I first started my business I was a copywriter and was doing traditional marketing. When I started checking my Google Analytics stats, I noticed my blog posts about Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter were getting the most traffic. Since I was already interested in exploring how these tools could help businesses with marketing, that information was just the push I needed to change the focus of my business.

If you don’t have it installed on your blog, here’s a short video from The Simple Blog Company about how to do it if you’re using WordPress.

Now that you’ve watched the video, go and install Google Analytics.

Andrea J. Stenberg

You have a main profile picture. I suggest you use the same one as on your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter accounts. There’s also a “Scrapbook” where you can post other photos. It kinda reminds me of the Facebook redesign.

There’s a links section where you can post your social media links as well as your website and blog. However, you can also add links in the introduction so you can really make it easy for people to find you.

What good is having a Google Profile?

If you have a very common name, I’d suggest this is vital as it will move you – rather than others with your name – higher up in the Google ranking. If you have an uncommon name (like Andrea Stenberg) it probably isn’t as important. Mashable claims if you set the profile to be visible it will show up first when you search your name, making it very important for SEO (search engine optimization). However, if you’re already all over the web as I am, it probably won’t. It didn’t for me. This blog comes up first when I Google myself.

Likewise, if you are just starting out on the web, having an incoming link from Google can’t hurt. It may even help you get found.

It’s free and only takes a few minutes to complete a profile. And unlike other profiles like Facebook or LinkedIn you can really set it and forget it. It’s not meant to be a social media site.

Andrea J. Stenberg

What you may not know is your LinkedIn profile is public and searched by search engines link Google. There are several things you can do to optimize your profile for SEO (search engine optimization).

This short video shows you a couple of simple things you can do to optimize your profile. If you haven’t done so you need to create your customized LinkedIn URL, and customize the anchor text on the links to your website.

In addition to changing your links, you should also include the important keywords in your profile summary. This will ensure you come up in searches within LinkedIn as well as making you more search engine friendly.

So, head on over to LinkedIn and make these changes. It should only take a few minutes but it will make a difference.

Andrea J. Stenberg

Particularly if you have a blog, it is important to notice what blog posts attract the most attention and which blog posts cause people to leave. When you do this, you can decide to write more blog posts about popular topics. You can also look at posts that cause people to leave and work on ways to get them to stick around longer.

One of the best ways to do this is to incorporate Google Analytics with your website or blog. Go into your Google Account, sign up for Google Analytics, and add the code to your site. (Read my previous post about Google Analytics).

While the information supplied by Google is astounding, unless you log into Google frequently and check your stats, it really isn’t helping you. That’s what I found I was doing – or rather not doing. I have Analytics set up, but I wasn’t using it frequently enough.

Then I discovered the Google Analytics Dashboard WordPress Widget. This WordPress plugin allows me to have my Analytics stats right on my blog’s dashboard. Whenever I log in, one of the first things I see is my stats.

I see when my traffic is coming in, and how much. I also see the blog posts that are getting the most traffic.

When I go to the edit posts page, I can see which days traffic has come in and how many left right away.

Now, I don’t have an excuse for not monitoring my stats. I can see a quick snapshot each day. And if I see a trend I want to know more about, I can log into Google Analytics and dig deeper.

Andrea J. Stenberg

Table of contents for Using Google to Market Your Business

1. Using Google to Market Your Business
2. Using Google to Market Your Business Part 2: Google Analytics
3. Using Google to Market Your Business Part 4: Google Keyword tool
4. Using Google to Market Your Business Part 3: YouTube

When it comes to marketing your business, there’s no better way than turning up in the top search results on Google. Since more and more people are using search engines rather than the phone book to locate business (even local businesses) you’d better make sure people can find you.

To get found, you need a plan to optimize your website so the search engines bring your website up first. This process is known as search engine optimization (SEO). Some of the basics of SEO include:

• Having search engine friendly URLs. For example: www.mywebsite.com/rosesforsale instead of www.mywebsite.com/index.php?forumid&#4589482%.  Not only are these URLs more search engine friendly, they’re more people friendly.
• Using appropriate keywords in the friendly URLs, as well as in the header of your page and within the body copy.
• Getting incoming links, particularly from relevant websites. For example a florist would do better getting links from a wedding planner or interior designer than from a mechanic.
• Having a sitemap

However, if you are a small business competing against hundreds or thousands of other businesses worldwide who are all online, certain keywords are just always going to be out of reach for you. Not matter how good you get at SEO you just won’t be able to crack the top ten because the competition is so fierce.

This is where the long tail comes in. Chris Anderson in his book The Long Tail popularized this concept. Basically the idea is to ignore the main keywords in your industry and instead focus on keywords that don’t have quite as much traffic but also don’t have as much competition. Roses might be a main keyword but Mothers Day Roses Owen Sound is a long tail keyword.

If you can optimize your website for keywords that only have 3,000 searchers each month but you can get in the top three fairly quickly you’ll likely get more traffic than if you optimize for keywords that have 100,000 monthly searches but you show up as item number 30.

The trick however is to figure out which long tail keywords to use. This is where Google Keyword Tool comes in. Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and you can type in keywords you think customers might use when searching for your products and services. Google generates a list of keywords plus suggestions and shows you local and worldwide searches for that keyword in the previous month.

Not only that, but Google will generate suggested related keywords. You can download the entire list as a text file or Excel spreadsheet. You can then take a closer look at the keywords and their traffic. Pick ones you haven’t been optimizing for and add a blog post or page to your website that uses those keywords. Then make sure you’re using Google Analytics to track what happens to that particular page as compared to other pages on your site.

Here’s a video walking you through the process.

Andrea J. Stenberg

If you missed them before, you might want to read Search Engine Optimization: Increase Your Chance of Getting Found Locally or Five Reasons to Learn About SEO and Use it On Your Site.

Table of contents for Using Google to Market Your Business

1. Using Google to Market Your Business
2. Using Google to Market Your Business Part 2: Google Analytics
3. Using Google to Market Your Business Part 4: Google Keyword tool
4. Using Google to Market Your Business Part 3: YouTube

YouTube is now owned by Google so this is yet another way to use Google as a marketing vehicle. With over 100 million U.S. viewers of YouTube (never mind the rest of the world) as of January 2009, clearly YouTube is a way to reach a large number of people.

Why should you add YouTube videos to your marketing plan?

SEO

First, search engines are starting to rank video higher than longer articles and blog posts. If you’ve used good keywords in your title and meta tags, your video is more likely to get found by Google and other search engines. Additionally, since you can include a link to your own website, you can further increase the ranking of your site by adding videos to YouTube.

More Clicks

Our eyes naturally go to photos. If your video shows up in a search someone does on Google, the thumbnail of your video is more likely to catch their eye and get clicked than a text only result. This means more traffic for you.

Link Bait

Good videos are “link bait”. YouTube automatically includes a link for views to use to add to their website. If you provide interesting or useful content it is more likely someone will add your video to their website, increasing the number of people who see and hear your message.

You’ll be cutting edge

Even though people are moving to YouTube in droves, the majority of small businesses haven’t tried it yet. If you start using video online today, there’s a good chance you’ll be one of the first ones in your industry to do so. You’ll be seen as cutting edge or just reach people your non-YouTube competitors don’t.

Works well with other social media sites

Social media sites like Facebook are designed to work with YouTube. You can easily and quickly import your YouTube videos and get double duty. Even if someone has never used YouTube before, they can still watch your content.

The rule of seven

YouTube was made for the Rule of Seven. I’ve said it before: people like to do business with those they know, like and trust. And getting to know, like and trust you takes time – at least seven contacts with your marketing message. Video is a great way to let people get to know you: they can see your face and hear your voice. You’re no longer an anonymous entity online but a living, breathing person. If you combine that with interesting and helpful information, video can speed up the process of getting people to feel comfortable enough with you to be willing to open their wallets and purchase your products or services.

Tips for creating a good video

I’m not a videographer so I’m not going to give you tips on how to actually use a video camera. If you need help there, hire someone or find a teenager who knows what she’s doing.

However, there are some tips I can give you to get better results.

1. It doesn’t have to be perfect. While you don’t what to look completely unprofessional, if your video is too polished viewers may feel like they’re viewing a commercial. Sometimes a slightly homemade quality to the video can make your message more authentic.
2. The average YouTube viewer spends 2.5 to 3 minutes per video. Keep your video in that range and you’ll likely get more viewers.
3. Dress professionally. I know I said a homemade quality may sound authentic but that doesn’t mean I think you should create your videos in your pajamas. Unless your personal and business brand is very quirky, dress how you would if you were meeting clients. Clean up your office – if that’s where you’re shooting.
4. Provide good, useful content. People don’t want a sales pitch. The best format is to talk about a problem your customers have and give them tips on how to solve it.
5. Don’t forget a subtle sales pitch. If you’ve given useful information, end your video with a soft sell. Include your website address and some sort of call to action – what do you want the viewer to do next. An ideal call to action is send them to a place on your website where they can get more information.

If you haven’t started using video yet, now might be the time to give it a try. Go to YouTube, see how others are viewing the site, get out your video camera and give it a try.

Andrea J. Stenberg

Are you using video and YouTube to market your business? Let us know how it works by leaving a comment. Also, if you know of businesses that are doing a good job with video, leave us links to the best online videos.

Table of contents for Using Google to Market Your Business

1. Using Google to Market Your Business
2. Using Google to Market Your Business Part 2: Google Analytics
3. Using Google to Market Your Business Part 4: Google Keyword tool
4. Using Google to Market Your Business Part 3: YouTube

I have to confess that I’ve been dragging my feet about using Google Analytics. Everyone was telling me how important it was but it just didn’t seem like a priority. My web hosting gives me fairly good stats on traffic, keywords people were using and the countries visitors are from. What more could Google Analytics do?

Apparently, a lot!

First you can track how many visitors came to your site, which pages they visited and how long they stayed. You can also see how these people came to your site; did they type in your URL, click a link from another site or come from a search engine.

If you notice certain sites are sending you a lot of traffic it’s worth visiting those sites to find out why. Perhaps you can do something to further encourage them to send traffic your way.

When looking at search engine traffic, you can not only see which search engines are sending you the most traffic, but also which keywords are the most common sources of traffic. Even more important, you can see which keywords sent you quality traffic. A keyword that sends a smaller number of people to your site who stay, visit a number of pages and eventually purchase is far more valuable to you than a keyword that drives tons of people to your site who take one look and then “bounce” off your site.

You can also separate paid keywords (ie Google Adwords) from organic keywords (searches). This will allow you to focus your advertising on keywords that actually lead to sales, thus reducing the amount you spend on people who don’t buy.

You can also look at the top landing pages for your site. Not everyone will arrive at your site at your home page. They may enter at any point. You can not only see which pages are the most popular entry to your site, you can see which are the most effective. If you see a popular landing page where lots of people are bouncing, you know you need to make some changes to that page to encourage people to stick around.

If you sell products from your website you can track which products are most popular, where the purchasers live and how they came to your site. This is important information to know when planning your marketing. If you know a large percentage of your customers come from Washington State you’ll want to focus your advertising there.

By tracking when and where people leave your site you can stop and rectify problems. For example, if you notice a large percentage of people are leaving mid-way through the purchase process you can revisit your process to see if it’s too difficult or not providing enough information.

The biggest problem with Google Analytics is there is almost too much data for beginners. It’s hard to know where to start and what to track. Particularly if you are just starting out in business it can seem like more trouble than it’s worth.

However, even if you’re not quite ready to take the time to learn how to use Google Analytics correctly, it’s worth putting the tracking code on your site now. That way, once you are ready to start analyzing your traffic you’ll have some history to look at.

To get started go to www.google.com/analytics and sign up. To learn more about all the different analytical tools, check out Google’s Conversion University.

Join me next week when we’ll explore Google’s keyword tools.

Andrea J. Stenberg

Are you using Google Analytics? Please leave a comment and tell us what you track and how it helps you run your business.

For small business, particularly “bricks & mortar” businesses with a local customer base, this is very good news. When it comes to getting your website found on Google, you don’t need to beat out the big players to get found. You just need to be better than your local competitors.

But how can you increase your chances of getting found by a local audience even more? There are a few simple steps you can take, to improve your chances.

First, have you noticed when you go to a website, there’s often a description of the site along the very top of your web browser? Those are known as title tags. You can control and change those tags to include keywords you think people looking for your products or services would use. Including local geographic terms is also a good idea. There are also meta tags, which visitors to your site don’t see but search engines do.

If you are using WordPress, you can use a plug-in to add or change these meta tags. I use the Platinum SEO plug-in. Once installed, it’s easy to add or change these tags. If you’re not using WordPress, get your webmaster to edit these tags for you. Or, find the nearest teenager. Odds are you can find one who can whip this off for you in exchange for a gift card for their favorite store.

But there’s another strategy you can use that’s a little more radical than tags, but in the long run will likely be more effective. Try partnering with other local businesses and work together to increase your entire community’s profile. “It’s not just building an online business, it’s building a local economy,” says website marketing expert Ryan Wiseman.

The first part of this basic strategy is simple link exchanges. Contact other local businesses and put each other’s links on your websites. This interconnectedness will help increase all your profiles on the web.

And you don’t need to worry about including “competitors” in these link exchanges. “I don’t see other graphic designers a competitors,” says Jennifer Harris, owner of Keylime Creative. “I see them as sources of information, future employees, future partners.”

This is the radical part of this strategy. Small businesses, particularly in smaller communities, need to stop looking at other businesses as the competition. They need to work together to promote the community as a whole. When businesses do this, everybody wins.

Beyond link exchanges, local businesses need to talk about other local businesses online. When you visit other local businesses and get good service or good value, write about it on your personal blog, Facebook, Twitter. If everyone makes a conscious effort to help promote each other, everybody wins.

Andrea J. Stenberg

What do you think about this idea of banding together with other businesses to help increase everyone’s visibility online? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts or experiences.

Length of Domain Name

While you can register a domain name of up to 63 characters, you probably don’t want one that long. Imagine trying to fit it on your business card or a customer trying to type it into their web browser. It’s annoying and has more chances for error. Trust me – every time I have to type out www.thebabyboomerentrepreneur.com, I curse having such a long domain name.

So how long is too long? Many experts suggest that staying under eight characters (not including the .com) is best. However, if you can’t find a shorter name, a longer one will work if it’s:

• easy to read
• easy to hear (no one is going to think you said something else)
• easy to spell
• easy to type
• easy to remember

Once again, www.thebabyboomerentrepreneur.com falls short. Trust me, no one can spell entrepreneur. And if they can, your fingers just don’t want to type it. Every time I need to enter that stupid word in my computer my typing speed slows down to nothing.

Keywords

Where possible, having keywords related to your business in your domain name is a plus. Having keywords in your domain will help with people looking in search engines find you.

Not only that, keywords in the domain make it easy for people to see at a glance what your website offers. Hotmail.com and AutoTrader.com are two examples of sites whose purpose is obvious from their url.

However, I don’t think keywords are essential. Ever heard of Amazon.com? Of course you have. What does the word amazon have to do with books? Nothing. But with clever marketing, they’ve made sure anyone on-line has heard of it.

And it doesn’t have to be a single word like Amazon. Think of how many people’s websites are theirname.com – www.ChrisBrogan.com for one. In fact, I was on a call with non-fiction writing expert Dan Poynter who said he gets 20,000 hits a month on www.DanPoynter.com and he’s never published that url anywhere.

My url is a mixed bag from this point of view. I seriously doubt any of my target audience typed “baby boomer” into a search engine to find me (please let me know if I’m wrong here). However, I get a lot of calls from the media who found me that way.

I guess what I’m saying is having keywords in your url is great if it makes sense, but in the long run it doesn’t matter as much as your marketing. And whatever you decide for a url, you had better reserve your own name as well. If you become known at all, even just in your niche, people will type it in to find you.

Dot com

Always, always reserve the dot com url. While dot org, dot net or a country code (.ca or .uk) are okay, but you’d better own the dot com as well. The truth is most people automatically assume you’re a dot com. You don’t want people going to your competitor because you don’t own that version.

Hyphen and Underscore

I hate urls that have a hyphen or underscore. They are hard to type and I don’t always remember them.

Blogging expert Yaro Starak at www.entrepreneurs-journey.com has said he wouldn’t have a hyphen in his url if he was doing it again.

Particularly, don’t choose a hyphen or underscore because someone else has your preferred option. Just like dot org, people will forget the hyphen and wide up at your competitor’s site.

Testing the Final Cut

When you’ve narrowed down your choices to a final few names, do some testing to see which url works best. Ask friends and customers which they prefer. Your favorite may have unexpected problems when you talk to other people.

If you have the money, try using Google Adwords to test two or more domain names. Adwords expert Perry Marshall has done split testing on urls. When running two campaigns with identical ads (headlines and copy) where the only difference is the url, he’s seen as much as a 30 percent difference in click-through rates. This is good information to know before you spend a lot of time and money promoting a site.

Register Your Own Domain Name

Make sure you register your domain name choice(s) yourself. I’ve heard too many horror stories of people who hired a website designer before they’d registered the url. The designer registers the domain name “for the client” but actually made sure they were the one who owned the domain. Down the road if the business wants to change to another designer, they find their url is being held hostage.

Registering a new domain is easy and cheap. All you need is an internet connection and a credit card.

Andrea J. Stenberg

How did you choose your domain name? What factors did you consider? Would you make the same choice if you were doing it today? Leave a comment and let us know.