Keyword Tree Visualization Tool Using Google Analytics Data

December 13, 2009 – 6:21 pm

There is a nifty new keyword tool developed by Juice Analytics which takes keyword data pulled from your Google Analytics account and presents the data in a visual manner, allowing you to see trends or patterns visually.

The following screen shot is taken from the JuiceKit keyword tree visualization tool using data from the True Confections Custom Wedding & Special Event Cakes google analytics account for the past 30 days. Click on the following image to enlarge it. Please note, the tool allows you to mouse over each keyword to reveal more data – not shown in this screen shot.

Keyword Tree Visualization tool using Google Analytics data.

Example of Keyword Tree Visualization Tool using Google Analytics data (based on past 30 days) click to enlarge

The tool reveals the following insights into the keywords which brought people to your site:

Keyword Usage

Keywords can be analyzed in terms of keywords that relate to your specified keyword. In the example provided below (click on the image above for larger view) the keyword “cakes” was entered as a search term for the keyword tree tool. The results show the keyword phrases what were searched on that brought people to the site. It also shows all the various combinations of search phrases in which “cakes” was used and shows if the related search words appeared before or after our chosen keyword. For instance, custom cakes or wedding cakes or cakes in berkeley. This is a great way to unearth search phrases that you might not have thought about or targeted for your web page.

The Popularity of the Search Keywords

Keywords that are larger were searched upon the most. In the example provided, wedding was the most popular keyword used in searches.

The Bounce Rate* for the Search Keywords

In my opinion this is where this tool really gets interesting. The keywords are color coded. Keywords which are green have a low bounce rate meaning people stayed on the site longer using these search terms, whereas keywords in red have a high bounce rate – meaning people left the site using these keywords. Keywords displayed in white have a medium bounce rate.

In the example, while wedding was the most popular search term, custom cakes or custom made cakes had a lower bounce rate, indicating this is a nice niche search term for True Confections Cakes. Similarly, the search term specialty cakes, is not only less popular (displayed in a small font size indicating a lower search volume) but it also appears in red meaning it has a high bounce rate.

Other Metrics

In addition to the bounce rate, the tool also allows for displaying data by % new visitors or Avg. time on site.

* Google’s Definition of Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert. You can minimize bounce rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy.

Analytics Visualization Keyword Tree YouTube Video

The following is a tutorial YouTube video which demonstrates how to use the visualization keyword tool.

By Studio 678 | Posted in google, seo | Comments (0)

Title Tag’s Best Friend, the Meta Description

September 28, 2009 – 5:44 am

Surely by now you’ve heard about meta tags and keywords, even the term “Meta Description”. But what is the meta description and why should you care, after all, that’s only for search engines right?

The meta description can be thought of as the description of what the current web page is about. Because the meta description also appears under the main title link (which comes from the title tag), the description can also be thought of as ad copy, as it encourages the user to click on the search result link.

If you do not include a meta description, google will grab content from the contents of the current page. This could include navigation buttons or other elements on the page that might not be from the main content area. Providing a meta description allows you to dictate what shows up in a search result listing.

Keep in mind the meta description is around 160 characters in length including spaces. To save space, you might consider NOT duplicating text already included in the search result title link (title tag) appearing just above the description. An example might be not to repeat your company name, as that might already be in the title link.

For a visual of how the title tag and meta description play out in a google search result, click on the following image and view the last entry for Deep Healing Acupuncture:

Google Search Result Example

Google Search Result Example

By Studio 678 | Posted in google, seo | Comments (0)

Import a Reverbnation RSS Feed Into Your Wordpress Blog

August 1, 2009 – 5:51 am

I wanted to create an easy system for a client, who is a musician, to enter his show dates using his Reverbnation account and have the rss feed for those dates display on his calendar page on his website.

After much searching for a solution on how to import an RSS feed into a Wordpress blog, I decided to use a feature from Feedburner called BuzzBoost which converts an rss feed into html.

So… my overall approach was as follows:

1) Create show dates (gig listings) on reverbnation.com, a site dedicated to helping musicians promote themselves.
2) Enter the RSS feed url from the Reverbnation gig calendar into Feedburner
3) Utilize the Feedburner BuzzBoost feature to then import the RSS feed into the Calendar page on his Wordpress website.

Clear as mud? All my client needs to do is update his gig calendar on Reverbnation and it will be automatically reflected on his Wordpress calendar page.

Here is a step by step tutorial on how to accomplish this:

1) Assuming you have a Reverbnation account, enter upcoming show dates.
2) From within the Reverbnation, copy the RSS url.

Reverbnation show dates screenshot

Reverbnation show dates screenshot - click to enlarge

3) Then enter this RSS feed url into your Feedburner account. See this blog entry on how and why to use feedburner to pomote your rss feed.
Reverbnation RSS url
Above – Reverbnation RSS feed URL as viewed in RSS reader

4) After entering the rss feed into your Feedburner account, click on the “Publicize” tab and then the “BuzzBoost” link under the left hand services listing.

Fedburner screenshot, showing BuzzBoost link

Fedburner screenshot, showing BuzzBoost link

5) There is a wizard to help you configure what you want the resulting html listing to look like. Editing these options will affect how your rss will be viewed when converted to html.

6) Once you are happy with the elements of the listing (they provide a preview), you can then copy the code FeedBurner generates

Buzz Boost Preview

Import an RSS feed into Wordpress

Feedburner BuzzBoost Code

7) Enter the code from step #6 into the Calendar page, entering them between the [code][/code] tags within the Wordpress page content area

Feedburner code entered into Wordpress - Click to enlarge

Feedburner code entered into Wordpress - Click to enlarge

8 ) Style the Calendar listing using css

Converted RSS feed displayed as HTML/CSS

Converted RSS feed displayed as HTML/CSS

div.feedburnerFeedBlock ul {
margin-bottom:15px;
margin-left:0;
padding-left:0;
list-style-type: none
}

div.feedburnerFeedBlock li {
margin-bottom:15px;
font-family: Georgia, “Times New Roman”, Times, serif;
}

div.feedburnerFeedBlock .headline a {
font-family: Georgia, “Times New Roman”, Times, serif;
font-size: 11px;
font-weight: bold;
color:#0B5249;
}

div.feedburnerFeedBlock .headline a:hover {
font-family: Georgia, “Times New Roman”, Times, serif;
color:#006699;
}

div.feedburnerFeedBlock p.date {
margin:0 0 0 0;
padding:0 0 0 0;
color:#666666;
}

The above example uses a Reverbnation RSS feed, but really you could import any RSS feed using the same approach. While it is possible to embed a Reverbnation Widget which displays the gig listings, I feel this approach is a little cleaner and more professional looking. Obviously this approach would also work with any blogging system (blogger, etc) other CMS systems (Drupal, Joomla) as well as a file based (html) website.

To see this in action, please visit:
http://www.chrisgamper.com

Since it is also possible to use the Reverbnation “My Band” Facebook application to pull show dates into a Facebook “Artist Page”, updating the show dates within the Reverbnation will also update the listing on Facebook AND the above mentioned website.

 

By Studio 678 | Posted in Wordpress, tutorial, web design | Comments (0)

Value of Running a Facebook Ad for a Small Business

May 13, 2009 – 12:05 am

Placing a Facebook Ad to advertise your Facebook (Fan) Page or Facebook Event is quite cost effective when compared to some other PPC solutions.

I just ran an ad for a client who runs a Pilates Studio. They are on a rather tight budget and so I suggested we go with a Facebook Ad. The largest increase in Facebook users of late has been those who are over 30 (I forget the exact stat) so this is the perfect target audience for my client to get in front of. Since Facebook knows all the details of its users (age, sex, geographic region) as well as their general interests (choices of groups, keywords used in Wall posts, etc.) a small business is able to tailor their ad to their exact target audience.

The results thus far have been pretty good. The ad has been running for roughly a month (April 14 start date) and thus far has accounted for over 25% of traffic to the client’s website! Granted, the daily traffic to the site is rather low (roughly 7.5 visitors per day) but 2 of those come from the Facebook Ad, for a whopping $1.00 per day (the client’s desired limit)

So, in total, for those of you keeping score, that’s 256,561 impressions (meaning it shows up in the right hand column in Facebook) 59 clicks and a total ad spend of $27.31 !! Quite a value I say.

Please see the embedded image for a screen shot of the Ad admin area, which shows what the actual ad looks like. You can also see some of the targeting going on with the ad near the bottom.

Facebook Ad for local Pilates Studio

Facebook Ad for local Pilates Studio - click to enlarge

Update June 17, 2009
I recently learned there is a much lower bounce rate for the ad if you link to a Facebook Page rather than linking to a website. Anyone else tested for this?

By Studio 678 | Posted in social networking | Tagged , , , | Comments (2)

List Your Web Site in the Google Local Business Directory

March 23, 2009 – 6:59 pm

One of the most important things you can do as a small business owner is to get your business listed in Google. This is a great way for your business to appear in the section titled “Local business results for…”  This has a map with push pin icons representing the local businesses, which are then listed to the right of the map.

google local business Studio 678

This listing appears before the other “organic” search results, including yelp and yellow pages and is therefore very helpful if you can get your business to appear there. Sometimes this is difficult in a competitive business area such as Real Estate Agent.

But it can be very powerful. I often get people who find me there when doing a search on ” Web Design Oakland ”

To get listed, gather information about your business in a document that you can cut and paste with your contact information, a short description about your business and perhaps a photo or two.

Then go to the following url:

http://www.google.com/local/add

You will need a google account, so either sign in if you have one or register for one. Once that is done, then you may begin to “create a profile” within your Google account.

You can even include coupons for users who find you on the web, have clients write reviews, and include information about street parking and hours of business operations.

Once you get listed you should begin to see more traffic to your website and hopefully more phone calls as well!

We’re a featured Oakland web design company in California web design company directory at Finders – US web designers directory

By Studio 678 | Posted in google, seo, web design | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Facebook Lexicon – Track Facebook terms

January 12, 2009 – 12:23 am

I discovered the new “preview version” of Facebook Lexicon http://www.facebook.com/lexicon/new/ today which was launched last September (hey so I’m a little behind!). Lexicon is an interesting app that reports on the Facebook terms that are frequently mentioned alongside the topics within Facebook. The following image shows terms that were used in conjunction with the term “jazz“:

Facebook Lexicon

Facebook Lexicon - click to enlarge

The above chart shows that the term “band” was the most frequently mentioned in conjunction with “jazz”, while “combo” was mentioned less frequently. For SEO purposes and keyword selection, this is very useful information to have! The chart also shows me the average age for the terms “jazz + band” was 27 years old and predominantly male.

Per Facebook: “The Y axis is the average age and the X axis is the average gender of users who posted the association. For example, a bubble up and to the left means that the association is more prevalent among older and more female users. A bubble down and to the right means that the association is more prevalent among younger and more male users. The size of the bubble indicates the number of times the word appeared alongside the topic in the given time window. You can view historical trends by using the slider at the bottom of the graph.”

You can also see demographics (age, gender and country) sentiment (do people like the term) pulse (number of mentions of related terms such as music or dance) and finally maps in addition to the “associations” chart shown above.

Lexicon is intended primarily for those looking to place ads, but in the future could be used to assist with selecting keywords. I say future because as of this post the current version of Lexicon is a preview version, meaning the you cannot select your own queries but rather must select from a predefined list. You can search for terms in the old Lexicon version http://www.facebook.com/lexicon/ but there aren’t the additional data views as in the new version.

From Facebook: “In this preview version we are giving you access to a few topics we hope you will find interesting. We will add additional functionality and index many more topics in the future.”

By Studio 678 | Posted in seo, social networking | Tagged | Comments (0)

The Title Tag and SEO

January 11, 2009 – 8:52 pm

The number one weapon in your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) arsenal is the Title Tag. This is an html tag which resides in the “head” portion of your web page. You can see the title tag in action by looking at the very top of your web browser.

Here’s a visual example of the title tag for Deep Healing Acupuncture:
title tag = Deep Healing Acupuncture, East Bay, Emeryville, Geraldine Shute, Pain Relief

Example of Title Tag

Example of Title Tag - click to enlarge

Another reason the title tag is important is that it also shows up in search engine search results pages as the title of the entry. Here’s an example of how that looks:

Title tag in google search result

Title tag in google search result - click to enlarge

Notice the title tag appears in blue as a link in the search result.

According to a April 2007 seomoz.com survey, who know a thing or two about SEO, “placing the targeted search term or phrase in the title tag of the web page’s HTML header” was the most important search engine ranking factor.

Anyone know what the most common title tag is? If you guess “untitled” you are correct!

By Studio 678 | Posted in seo, web design | Tagged | Comments (2)