Category Archives: SEO & Analytics

evaluating if your website is working for your organization

How Do I Know If My Website Is Working?

Your website should help grow your business, drive your mission forward or create a positive impact for your organization. But how do you know if your website is working? A website can be pretty and still be ineffective.  A successful website should produce the following: Phone calls: Do you get phone calls after people visit your website? Website traffic: Are you getting visits from paid sources, such as Google Ads, print ads/media outlets Email subscribers: How many people are joining your mailing list or otherwise taking advantage of your online offers What are your analytics telling you? Use your website analytics to see the relative success of your marketing efforts. Don’t settle for plain vanilla reports; dig a bit deeper to get the data you need to make informed decisions. For example, we have a client who was running ads in a local magazine. His goal was to increase online registrations. His…
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7 Keys To Managing Your Online Presence

Clients often ask how they can optimize their websites. We give them the wheel once we’ve built the car so to speak. This gives them more control of their online marketing efforts. Below we have comprised a list of seven key tools for clients who want to manage their online presence. Of course, we wrap all of this up in a bow by using our favorite Content Management System (CMS), WordPress! Content is still King! Fresh, relevant content is necessary to move the needle in terms of both Search Engine Optimization and effective communication. Take advantage of the blogging function on your website and share information about your products, services or upcoming projects with your consumers and clients. The last thing you want to do is squander your investment in a great new website by having it go stale. Engage your consumers and clients with Social Media. Devoting time to 2…
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How To Use Google Analytics To Move the Mission Forward

How to use Google Analytics is a mystery to many of our clients; they look at the reports but feel like they’re trying to read tea leaves. They often need some guidance in interpreting what they see. At a recent round-table that I moderated, participants found the below examples helpful. They remarked how they gave them a clearer understanding of how Google Analytics (or a similar tool) can help them make decisions that impact their bottom line and move their mission forward. Example 1 A client (a nonprofit camp) had done some paid advertising through various local magazines. When asked about rerunning their ads, they asked “Is it worth it”? The client’s gut was telling him the ad wasn’t worth the investment. However, the data suggested otherwise. We looked at the visitor flow on his website and saw that at least one new camper had registered after following a link…
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Google Rewarding Mobile-Friendly Websites

Mobile-Friendly Websites rewarded In case you’ve been living under a rock – or, you know, busy running your business – in February Google announced they are changing their algorithm to reward mobile-friendly websites as of April 21. It’s not that they “ding” you for not having a mobile site, but those that have a mobile-friendly website will be rewarded. What does this mean? It means that your content needs to be optimized for smart phones and other mobile devices. How do you know if your site is optimized? Its pretty easy actually. Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test page. It will tell you if the page passes or not. Mobile-friendly site Mobile-unfriendly site You can also check out their Get Started page that has links to a slew of information and several guides to help you understand how all the pieces fit together. Next Steps Google isn’t removing you from the search results but it will…
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Google Analytics – 4 Key Metrics to Watch

Google Analytics provides a lot of greatly detailed charts, graphs, and tables that show how well your website is helping your company establish credibility, enhance brand awareness and increase sales. But for some, the sheer amount of data can be overwhelming. Fear not. We have winnowed it down to four key metrics to focus on to help you get a clear picture of what’s happening on your website. 1. Learning about your Website Visitors via Google Analytics Google Analytics tells you how many total visits you’ve had over a set time period, how many were Unique Visitors, the average time spent viewing your site, and the average number of pages viewed per visit. What this data tells you: Traffic spikes could be the result of a website redesign, an event you spoke at, or links from other sources. A steady increase shows that what you’re doing something right. Traffic that…
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Google Analytics For Small Business (video)

Here is the video of Jann Mirchandani at iCAN-Global‘s September Forum. iCAN-Global links global business and technology resources with innovators worldwide. Jann was honored to be invited to speak at their September Forum, help at Westchester Community College and broadcast worldwide. Jann’s discussion covered the basics of Google Analytics and how to use it to evaluate and improve your online marketing.

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Quality Content, Strong Keywords and Blogging

Common Sense SEO

We get this question all the time, “Do you do SEO?” And while I am rarely at a loss for words, I still struggle with the answer. Why? Because it’s a loaded question. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, means something different for everyone. For some people, it’s Pay Per Click advertising (which refer to strategic partners.) For some people, it’s extensive keyword research or content development which we can do. Yet I can’t say we don’t do SEO. It’s just that we take a more common sense SEO approach; good content added over time using proper semantics. HUH?! Let’s take a closer look at common sense SEO strategies and how you can use them to help improve your website’s page rank (on your own or with some help from Marketing Cafe.) Content Development Are you sharing useful, relevant information on your website? This means more than just adding your hours…
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Top 12 Tips

Top 12 Tips For Driving Traffic To Your Website

It’s sort of the holy grail of web development: driving traffic to your website. Your website is arguably your best, most effective way to communicate to your audience what your business is and how you can help them. (Notice I didn’t say “what you do”; focus on what’s in it for your customer.)There are a myriad of tactics to help drive traffic to your website. A simple search will yield hundreds of articles to help you. But here’s a breakdown of our favorites. They are our favorites because they work, they are simple and you don’t need to spend a fortune to implement them. (Now they’re your favorites too, right?) #1 Quality Content. We’ve all heard this one. But keep in mind this is quality for your readers; it should be helpful, clear and concise – and original. The same rules that applied in high school apply here. Research is just…
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