Small Business Odyssey – Page 13 – Real world advice and tips for small business marketing

November 26, 2011November 26, 2011

Do You Know How People Find Your Website on Google?

Google’s Webmaster Tools (GWT) show you clearly how Internet users find your website through Google’s search results. You can learn, for example, what search terms result in your site being displayed and which of these are the top queries for your website.

Registering with Google Webmaster Tools and verifying your website

You need to visit Google’s Webmaster Tools site and sign in using your Google account. This is the image you will see when you visit the site:

Just click on the ‘Sign in to Webmaster Tools’ button and follow the instructions to enter username and password. Once you are on the site, you will see a button, ‘ADD A SITE’ and you will be able to add the web address (URL) of your website.

Before any results are reported, you will need to verify that you are the owner of the website. Google Webmaster Tools explains how to do this and one of the options is to copy a verification file to your website (so that Google can check that you actually have Webmaster rights/access to the site you listed).

Once you are verified, you will then need to be patient as Google takes some time to crawl your site and start reporting results. I would give it a few days if you want to get anything meaningful. The Google bots take holidays too – they don’t visit your site every day (unless your site is a really top ranked site or is updated daily and you let Google know about it).

What the Webmaster Tools tell you about how people find you in Google search results

Webmaster Tools provides information to show you how your site is seen on the web – it covers search queries, links to your site, keywords, internal links and subscriber statistics. This information is accessible via the left hand menu:

What I want to focus on in this post, is the ‘search queries’ information and its implications. If you click on “search queries” in Webmaster Tools, you can find out valuable information about your website:

Queries: the total number of different search queries in Google that resulted in your site being displayed; this is the number of search terms that generated a listing of your site in Google’s search results (for the period you specify).
Query: a search term used by an Internet searcher that resulted in your website being listed in the Google search results; Google lists the top search terms (in descending order of frequency) that result in your website appearing in Google’s search results.
Impressions: the number of times one of your web pages appears in the Google search results for viewing by someone who searches on Google; Google gives you the total number of impressions ordered by query, along with the percentage change over the previous period.
Clickthrough Rate (CTR): how many times your website impressions (appearances in Google’s search results) produced a click; Google expresses the clickthrough rate as a percentage (number of clicks as a percentage of number of impressions).
Average Position: what position on the search results your website appeared at for a specified query; Google expresses this as an average position and shows the change in terms of ‘+’ or ‘–‘ the number of positions (improvements in position are shown in green).

So through the Webmaster Tools you can learn the total number of Google ‘queries’ that resulted in your site being displayed. You can establish what Google search queries were used to locate your site and which of these search terms generated the most traffic. You can also establish which search terms resulted in the most clicks. The other valuable piece of information is your average page rank for a particular query (which will impact heavily on your impressions and clickthrough rate).

In the following diagram, I show how Google illustrates these results (this is the result over two days for my new site, a day after I registered the site on Webmaster Tools):

To access this representation of your search queries results, you click on ‘more’ at the end of your ‘query’ listing and the illustration will appear. The image above is for ‘top queries’ and the illustration below is for ‘top pages’ (you can choose these options by using the tabs at the top left).

At the top on the left hand side, there is a button ‘Filters’ that allows you to set parameters for the displayed information, e.g. by geography.

Mining the riches of Webmaster Tools

There is a lot more to Google’s Webmaster Tools than at first meets the eye. As you go deeper into this Google tool, you can find a rich store of information that can help your site get indexed better by Google, crawled more often by the Google bots, displayed more frequently in search results and visited more often – it’s up to you to tell Google what you want.

In subsequent posts, I will explore some of the things that you can do based on other information that is available in Google’s Webmaster Tools:

What to do if you don’t like your search query results shown on Webmaster Tools
How to improve Google’s indexing of your targeted keywords
How to improve backlinking for your website
What to do to create more internal links
How to create and submit a sitemap
What to do about Google’s diagnosis of your website.

These topics alone demonstrate how important it is to use the Webmaster Tools to understand how people find your site on Google and how Google actually ‘sees’ your site.

November 24, 2011

Free WordPress Plugin: podPress Audio Player for Podcasts

podPress is a free WordPress Plugin that enables you to install an audio player in your blog post. Visitors to your blog are then able to play the podcast directly on your blog.

The key thing is that you have control over where the audio player is located so that you can ensure it is near a relevant comment or resource. All you have to do is insert a simple piece of code in your post where you want the media player to display and podPress does the rest.

podPress does a range of things that are particularly useful for small business marketing:

acts as an automatic media player for videos as well as audios
allows listeners to control the player
facilitates download of the podcast
provides stats on downloads (including graphs)
generates RSS (and ATOM) feed and submits feed to iTunes (on publication).

So this free WordPress plugin enables you to readily display a media player for your audios or videos as illustrated below:

[display_podcast]

When someone clicks on the play button, the audio player image expands to show the progress of the podcast and to enable the listener to pause the player:

How to create your audio player with podPress

Once you have installed the free WordPress Plugin, you need to advise the podPress plugin of the location and details of your podcast file. Some of these details can be completed by using the “auto detect” button provided against the relevant field, others are completed automatically by the plugin. The screenshot below shows the fields that need to be completed either by yourself or automatically by the plugin:

podPress also provides a number of fields so that you can specify the relevant details for inclusion of your podcast in iTunes. However, you can override this option if you have some other method of syndicating your podcast.

podpress is a solid free WordPress Plugin that enables you to stream audio or video on your site and simultaneously broadcast your podcast to iTunes.

November 23, 2011

iTunes: How to Avoid a Green Screen in Your Video

For the last few weeks I have been frustrated by a green screen showing on iTunes when I attempt to view a high quality video. I have been getting audio but no picture apart from an annoying green screen.

I searched the Internet and found many other people were having a similar problem. Most of the responses to the question, “How do I remove the green screen when I play my videos on iTunes?”, were highly technical. On one particular site, the technical experts were arguing amongst themselves about what was the best method or who had the best solution. I found most of the responses somewhat bewildering and confusing.

Green screen on iTunes – a question of codecs?

A codec is the software that video players use to create (compress) a video or play (decompress) the video. Some video players (such as iTunes) have both kinds of codecs – for creating and playing videos.

It seems that one of the fundamental problems is that the codecs that have been developed for creating videos are outpacing the codecs incorporated in iTunes. As video creation becomes more and more sophisticated and higher quality, sites that provide video players have to decide how advanced they should make their video players and what level of codecs to employ [the parallel in computing is, “Do you move to Windows 7 or do you stick with Windows XP and put up with conversion problems?].

Some experts in the field suggest you work out the codec you require and download it. Microsoft itself discourages this practice and warns against the the dangers of this action:

Warning

Use caution when installing codecs that you find on the Internet, particularly some of the free codec packs that claim to include codecs from a wide variety of companies or organizations. Incompatibilities are known to exist with some of the components in these codec packs that can cause serious playback issues in the Player and other players, lead to system corruption, and make it difficult for Microsoft Support to diagnose and troubleshoot playback issues.

So what should you do to get rid of the green screen in iTunes videos?

The solution: AVS Video Converter

Finally, after weeks of searching and reading, I have found a simple solution that serves multiple purposes – the AVS Video Converter. What this effectively does is take a video that uses one set of codecs (such as MP4, usually playable on iTunes) and converts it to a video that uses a different set of codecs (such as WMV, playable on Windows Media Player).

The besuty of this software, AVS Video Converter, is that you get to choose the final output from a range of options provided.

AVS Video Converter Contol Panel

The software is very easy to operate and very reasonably priced. Here’s a screen capture of the control panel:

You can see across the top, the options for the output (e.g. AVI, DVD, MP4, MPEG, WMV, etc). All you have to do is highlight the video output type you want, browse your computer to select your video file and specify the folder for the converted video. The AVS Video Converter retains the high quality of the original video.

You are able to monitor the planned conversion (before pressing the “CONVERT” button) by pressing the “Advanced” button and the resultant display will show full details of the input and output files (with the relevant video codec identified).

You can monitor the quality of the video as it is being produced by clicking on the arrows beside the “Advanced” button. You will be able to see “Elapsed” (time taken so far to convert the video), “Remaining” (time required to complete the conversion) and “Overall Progress” (percentage of video conversion). The blue bar shows visually where the video conversion is up to. The monitoring screen will also display the image relevant to the location in the video conversion:

Well, the AVS Video Converter solved all my problems with the green screen on iTunes and I converted six videos the day after I purchased the software.

AVS Video Converter: 70% off Sale until 30 November 2011

The award-winning AVS4YOU software, including the AVS video converter, is normally offered on an annual fee basis for the whole suite of 18 programs (listed below). For the month of November 2011, this whole suite of 18 programs is being offered at 70% off for unlimited access (and download) – Price $59.

AVS – Unlimited Access to 18 Software Programs

This offer includes free updates and free support. Here are the 18 software programs in this unbelievabe offer:

If you want to remove the green screen from videos on iTunes then the AVS Video Converter is the answer – but why not take advantage of the great offer for unlimited access to the whole suite of AVS software programs (while it is on offer in November)?

November 22, 2011

Watch the Visitors to Your Website!

A new WordPress Plugin, WPClicks, enables you to watch your website traffic. You can literally see where your visitors go on your site and in what order they visit your web pages.

This very clever and useful WordPress Plugin even produces a video so you can visually track what pages your visitors viewed and in what sequence.

WP Clicks also provides web traffic stats in terms of direct, referred and search traffic. You can see the visitors who came to your site directly (entered your web address in their browser) or were referred from some other site or found your site through a search engine. It identifies referring sites so that you can investigate where your referral traffic is coming from.

This intelligence enables you to edit your website to remove blockages, dead-ends and repetition. It also gives you insight into what pages are of interest to visitors, so that you can adapt your pages accordingly.

Now small business marketers will be able to track the behaviour of their web traffic, improve their website design and enhance their conversion rates through the new WordPress Plugin, WPClicks.

November 20, 2011November 20, 2011

How to Install a WordPress Plugin

A WordPress Plugin is software that extends the functions of the basic WordPress program. Plugins enable you to import or export information, increase the security of your blog, enhance search engine optimisation (SEO) and undertake an endless range of tasks designed to improve the functionality of your WordPress blog. When I last looked there were over 17,00 plugins in the WordPress Directory (with over 235 Million downloads).

Installing a WordPress Plugin

WordPress makes it very easy to install plugins. There are a series of steps you can follow which are guaranteed to work 95% of the time, so have a go without fear. I will list out the steps here, so you can follow easily.

Step 1: Download the WordPress Plugin to your computer

To locate a WordPress Plugin, you can visit the WordPress Directory, search available plugins from within the admin area of your blog or undertake a Google search for the specific WordPress Plugin you are looking for. Many WordPress Plugins are free but some of the more sophisticated ones have a fee. Important Note: For most plugins you will download a zip file which you should place in a designated folder on your computer (I call mine “WordPress Plugins”).

Step 2: Upload the WordPress Plugin to your blog

There is a Plugin Section in the Admin menu (yourblogURL/wp-admin) of your WordPress blog. As the following image shows, the options available under this menu section are “Installed Plugins”, “Add New”, “Editor” and “Akismet Configuration”. Akismet is one of the installed plugins that comes with your basic WordPress blog and is designed to handle comment spam.

You need to click on the “Add New” option and the following image will display. Here I have subsequently clicked on “upload” (bolded) to start the upload process:

You then use the “browse” button to locate the zip file for the WordPress Plugin on your computer. Once you have highlighted the file in the relevant folder on your computer, you press the “INSTALL NOW” button. Note: WordPress Plugins are usually uploaded as zipped files (do not unzip the file unless specifically instructed to do so by the developer).

Step 3: Activate the WordPress Plugin

You need to make sure you click the “activate” button once you see that the Plugin has been successfully uploaded. This activate button effectively integrates the Plugin with the WordPress Program. Once a plugin has been uploaded, it is added to the Installed Plugins list.

Step 4: Read the WordPress Plugin instructions carefully

Each Plugin comes with its own set of instructions re setup and operation. In most cases, you will need to complete some data fields to specify what options you want. For example, in the installed plugin listing for the All in One SEO Plugin you will see this set of instructions/options:

“Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. Options configuration panel | Upgrade to Pro Version | Donate | Support | Amazon Wishlist”

A WordPress Plugin can open up a whole new world of functionality for your WordPress blog and enable you to automate many tasks associated with blog post and comment management, marketing of your small business online and presentation of information to readers and the search engines.