Sunday, September 27, 2009

Inside Google Adwords


I just discovered this blog from the Google Adwords team. Good stuff.
This is what you can find

  • The latest industry trends and information
  • Google insights and news
  • Relevant product information and updates
It gets a bit technical and for those of you who do not spend a few hours a week on Google Adwords, you may loose patience quickly. For the others, here's the latest article on Google new keyword tool.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Alexa gives you quick web metrics on the go!












From time to time, I receive inquiries from companies that do not have any analytics capabilities (Google Analytics, web trends, Omniture) embedded into their web site. Often, they do not have a good sense of who is visiting their web site, for how long, what are the referring sources and so on ... I found out there was a way to get these analytics without installing any code in any web site. Alexa.com crawls the web and consolidates basics analytics for the majority of web sites. This is what I gathered for the web site hotels.com:

  1. About 1,000 visitors researched the web site yesterday (09.12.09)
  2. They looked at 4.4 pages on average
  3. The bounce back rate (i.e. how many people left the web site after landing on the home page) was 31.3%
  4. Visitors spend on average 4.7 minutes
  5. There are 2,824 inbound links to hotels.com
  6. Keywords used to find hotels.com were: hotels.com, hotels, hotel, cheap hotels etc ... Alexa.com also gives a set of visitor demographics:


The information is not as robust as let's say an Omniture report but this provides a good proxy to basic analytics. And it does not require installing any code into the web site. This is perfect for individuals who do not have access to companies sets of analytics.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Top 12 blog editing tips

I did some research recently as I wanted to create a blog etiquette for a project I am working on. This is a summary of best practices and personal experience blogging. Hope it is useful:


1. Be transparent. You are not blogging anonymously .


2. Be truthful. Honesty is the best policy when it comes to blogging. Be accurate, and above all, tell the truth.


3. Be yourself. Your personality should show through in your blog posts.


4. Share your excitement. The best blog posts display your emotions. If you are excited about something, don’t be afraid to show it.


5. Be kind. Make sure your criticism is constructive.


6. Don’t cut and paste. Create unique content.


7. Link strategically. You should try to link out to at least one other site in every post. This could be an example of the point you are making.


8. Ask questions. You should try to pose a question at the end of every blog post to encourage dialogue.


9. Check comments. Before blogging, make sure the topic has not been discussed already.


10. Spread the word. Look for ways to talk up our blog (newsletter, conversations etc.)


11. Newspaper test. Make sure your comment passes


12. Appropriateness. Some questions or comments may not be suitable for an open audience