Let Your Website Do The Work!

Beginning Your Business Blogging - The First Step

The best way for small business owners to get started blogging is to do some research. Start looking at other blogs and start, getting to know what blogging is.  If this is a new thing for you, find some other blogs and bookmark them and subscribe to them. And then what I suggest is to start commenting on those blogs, because not only what you can do when you comment on those blogs, is you can have, when you leave your comment you will have a link back to your Web site or a blog.  So it’s a great way to get some links back to your site. Search engines love links, so that’s just a free link for you to get by commenting on another person’s blog.

And then you’re getting experience as you find out what are they writing about?  So look at your competitors.  What do their blogs look like, do they write long posts, how often do they post? It’s really  study this information to get started. I have found some resources where you can go to find these other blogs to be a part of.

First you can go to a Web site called www.Technorati.com and what you can do is you can search for your expertise or your niche on there. This is a great blog search engine and you can then find the blogs that relate to it. 

Another good website that I just found out about recently is called www.blogcatalogue.com. And this is sort of like a search engine like Technorati for blogs but it’s also a catalog so you just type in the search field what you are looking for. Just for example with marketing, so you just search "marketing blog" and then it just pulls up all the different marketing blogs.

So then you can go and find those and just look at what they’re doing and you know, how they’re getting Web site traffic and how they’re setting up their blog. And just see what you want to copy and what you don’t want to copy and then just really get out there and start commenting on other blogs and  get familiar with the blogging community.

The Best Blogging Services For Small Business Owners

There’s two big blogging platforms that I would recommend for small business owners.  One is TypePad and the reason I recommend this is because it’s a great “do it yourself blogging service” and so they make it just so easy for you to add what’s called a Widget, you can add those things easily to your blog and they make the design of it real easy. There’s no coding knowledge. It’s all what you see is what you get. There’s just a lot you can do with it on your own. 

The other blogging service that I recommend is WordPress.  That’s  a big one that’s out there and the reason why I usually tend to recommend TypePad as opposed to WordPress, I do have my own blog on TypePad.

The reason why I recommend TypePad for small business owners is because there’s a big learning curve that goes into WordPress.  So you have to have someone set up your WordPress blog, then plus you’re having to learn the platform itself which isn’t really intuitive like TypePad is.

So are you a do it yourselfer and do you not want to spend a lot of time learning,  the service, or do you want to pay  someone else to do it for you and then have them train you on it after the fact?  So those are two routes that you can go with when choosing a blogging platform.

They're Not Just Numbers!

After your web site is live and on the web, you're all done right? Not exactly, now comes the fun part tracking your web site visitors and statistics. Yes, you heard me I said "fun". This part can be fun if you know what you are looking for and have a system in place to help. So you are ready to start tracking, but what do all of these weird terms mean. Let's first start with some definitions and then I will show you what is most important to track and what you can ignore.  
 

Page Loads- The number of time a page is viewed and loaded on your website.  

Unique Visitors- How many individuals are viewing your website. 

Returning Visitors- How many visitors to your site are returning to your website.  

First Time Visitors- How many visitors to your site are new.  

These website stats are usually displayed in a summary page or the first page of website tracker tool. Use these stats to determine trends. Does your website have a weekday rush and a weekend slump? Is your website in general growing or declining?  

Besides these summary statistics, there is much more information that will help you grow your website and online marketing. For my website stats I use StatCounter so if you use different platforms the wording might be a little different. The best place to find out where your website traffic is coming from is to look at "Recent Came From" stats or in Google it is called "Traffic Sources Overview" in your Dashboard. This information shows you exactly what links your website traffic is coming from. If there is no link, the traffic is called direct traffic.  

This information is important, because it allows you to see if your social networking, blogging, pay per click advertising, and article marketing is paying off. You should be able to tell from this information what sources are bringing the most traffic to your website. 

Also, it's important to take a look at your keyword stats. How are users searching for your website? Is your search engine optimized for the important keywords? Are people clicking on your search engine ads?  

There are so many more statistics you can pay attention to with your website such as visitor maps, internet browser stats, and visit length. But start with the stats mentioned above and then move on to these more complicated website stats.  

Now, that you've learned what you should be tracking I suggest getting a weekly report emailed to you automatically with all of this information. Both tools I recommend allow you to have this set up. Then analyze the data every week and plug it into a spreadsheet. If you aren't happy with your stats, then begin to implement some changes to your website and traffic sources. But keep in mind that a brand new website needs a few months time to grow its stats and traffic.  

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR NEWLETTER OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Jennifer Haubein publishes "SiteNotes" a FREE bi-weekly ezine for small business owners who want a website that actually works. If you're ready to start making more money online, get your FREE tips now at www.BestBizWebsiteSolutions.com/newsletter.html

Jennifer Haubein publishes “SiteNotes” a FREE bi-weekly ezine for small business owners who want a website that actually works. If you’re ready to get insider tips website developers don’t want you to know, and start making more money online, get your FREE tips now at http://www.BestBizWebsiteSolutions.com/newsletter.html.

New Website Project Is Almost Ready For Beta Testing

I'm very excited, because this weekend my brother-in-law (business partner) and I will be putting the finishing touches on a project we have been working on since January.  We're ready to launch the product to a few beta testers I have lined up and then after beta testing release it to the public. I'm looking forward to the testing process and getting feedback to help improve the project even more. 

I don't want to give away too many of the details until closer to the launch date, but it was developed with small business owners in mind.  A little taste is we have combined a lead generation website, a blog, and a membership website all in one! 

What's funny is the deadline we set for the project is my brother-in-law's birthday so we will be celebrating that evening as the project comes to a finish.  Normally, we have family celebrations at each other's house with all of our kids, but this year it's a night out on the town without the kids!  I'm really looking forward to it.   

Is Your Website Working? Understanding Your Website Conversion Stats

I recently received a very important question from one of my clients.  What’s a good conversion or opt-in rate for your free offer on your website?  This is a difficult question to answer, because it depends on several factors.  It depends on what industry you are in, how compelling your free offer is, and if you’re getting enough website traffic to effectively measure this statistic. 

First how do you calculate your website conversion or opt-in rate?

1)      You must have a website statistic tool installed on your website.  I recommend www.StatCounter.com and Google Analytics, both are free tools.

2)      Use your website stat tool to determine the number of unique visitors to your website in a specific timeframe such as a month or week. 

3)      You should be able to obtain the number of subscribers to your free offer.  If you’re using 1ShoppingCart view the autoresponder report associated with your free offer.  This report shows you a breakdown of new signups for your free offer within the last 30 days. Obtain the number of subscribers using the same specific time frame as your unique visitors.

4)      Calculate your conversion using this formula: (Number of Subscribers During A Specific Timeframe)/(Number of Unique Website Visitors During A Specific Timeframe)= Opt-In Rate

Now, that you have your conversion or opt-in rate, how do you know if it’s a good number? 

If you’re just starting out with a brand new website and don’t have much traffic yet, it might be hard to get accurate numbers.

I just recently calculated my opt-in rate and I got 15% opt-in rate.  I’m very happy with this opt-in after comparing with a successful internet marketer, Ali Brown.  Ali Brown’s recent opt-in rate on her squeeze page according to numbers presented at her last workshop was 13-26%.  So you might think that you should be getting very high opt-in on your free offer, but with an increase in free offers and email newsletters people are picky about who they give their name and email address to. 

In my opinion, a good opt-in rate for a free offer is anywhere from 5-30%.  If your opt-in rate is lower I would suggest focusing on increasing your website traffic and making sure your free offer is presented in a compelling manner. 

Also, keep in mind that a good conversion rate for a sales page is usually about 1%, so don’t apply these same numbers to your sales conversions.

Jennifer Haubein publishes “SiteNotes” a FREE bi-weekly ezine for small business owners who want a website that actually works. If you’re ready to get insider tips website developers don’t want you to know, and start making more money online, get your FREE tips now at http://www.BestBizWebsiteSolutions.com/newsletter.html