SEO BUILT INTO YOUR WEB DESIGN

Keep it simple is the best way for small business owners to tackle their SEO plan

SEO is one of the most coveted areas in online knowledge. SEO off page optimisation refers that factors which affect your website or page ranking in natural search results. The off page as the name suggests is doing things offsite to improve your page ranking. In which the most important thing that helps us to increase our sites ranking is creating links and back links, the only thing you can do off site to increase your page ranking is building good and quality links. So moving forward lets discuss some major points ‘off page optimisation’ which would be helpful in creating good links and thus increasing our ranking in the search engines.

Here are some major techniques of ‘off page optimisation’ which should be implemented while working on off page

• Inbound links and anchor texts
• Link building
• Directory submission
• Article submission
• Social bookmarking
• Forum posting
• Press release

So let’s start with our first step of ‘off page optimization’ :

• Inbound linking particularly known as one way link building, getting links from known websites is priceless while doing off page optimization. It is just like a certificate which has been given to you acknowledging your page quality. So always try to make quality links. Anchor text is a phrase or word used for your links; it should be always targeting your keywords. Always implement your key words in your anchor text, so that the search engine could notice your relevant site.
  
• Link building again refers to building links for your sites. There are many ways of link building but you should keep in your mind that always build links with reputed and high quality sites. Because a few links from reputed and quality sites are much better then hundreds of low links. So to improve your sites ranking always try to make good links.
  
• Directory submission is the most simple and easiest way of link building, and has major part of off page optimisation techniques. You have to simply submit your sites information with title and description about your service or product to various online directories. If your directory submission is in proper category and with a proper anchor text, then there is a probability to get an increase in your sites page rank
  
• Article submission refers to writing articles on the theme of your website or content containing information to your website are submitted to article directories. This is the best way to get one way links permanently, not only you get link but articles help you to reach more peoples. So it is one of the best ways to get links and increase your ranking.
  
• Through social bookmarking we manage our sites information on public bookmarking sites and can share our bookmarks all over the world. Once our bookmark is shared with some people and they find our content exciting, they will share it with others and going on and on our bookmark moves to the front page thus increasing our sites traffic.
  
• Finding online forums of our sites interest and visiting them to promote our links is known forum posting. Through forums we have a great opportunity to make relationships. But always contribute in forums while you promote links, because only promoting links and not contributing in forums may consider you as spammer and you may get banned from the forum.
  
• In press releases we normally release the news and updates of our sites to promote the news and current events. However it is the most efficient way to release the updates because press releases are found always on top as compared to the articles. And are picked by the Google faster.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a free web-based program that records activity on your website. Here is just a partial list of what your analytics data can tell you:

• the number of daily visitors
• the most popular pages on your site
• referral sources to your site
• geographic location of your users
• how long visitors stay on your site

As you can see, you can get a lot of data from Google Analytics, but some of the data may not be accurate because of the way the software works.

How Does Google Analytics Work?

Google Analytics works with the help of a special programming language called JavaScript. Every time a web page on your site is loaded, the web server sends information about the web visitor to Google’s analytics servers. Special software on the servers compile this information for later retrieval by a webmaster.

One of the things the software program does is to try to determine whether this is a new site visitor or a returning visitor. And this is where the problem with accuracy comes in.

Why Isn’t Google Analytics Always Accurate?

In order to accurately figure out whether a visitor is new or returning, Google relies on a small text file called a cookie that it places on the internet user’s computer. As long as this cookie remains on the computer, Google’s information will be accurate. But if the cookie gets deleted, Google no longer recognizes that user as a returning visitor. This changes the way the visit to the website is counted. Let’s take a simple example to see why this could lead to inaccurate data.

Let’s say web visitor A comes to your site for the first time. Google does’t see a cookie on his computer, so it correctly counts him as a first-time visitor and places a cookie on his computer so it can recognize him next time. Later in the day, visitor A comes back. Google checks his computer and sees the cookie, so it counts him as a return visitor. So the tally for the day is 1 unique visitor.

Now let’s say that visitor A deleted all the cookies on his computer between visits to the website. This can happen if he clears out his browser history or runs an antivirus check. Now when he comes back for the second time, Google once again thinks he’s a first-time visitor. In this case the tally for the day would show 2 unique visitors.

Another problem with relying solely on Google is its inability to detect internet robots visiting your site. Because Google Analytics relies on JavaScript, and robots don’t trigger the JavaScript code, Google won’t tell you when a robot has come calling.

Given these weaknesses, what alternatives are there?

What Are the Alternatives to Google Analytics?

The alternative to the Google Analytics model is to put an analytics program right on your web server. Many hosting companies do have this as part of your hosting package and the information you can glean from your server is very useful. The advantage here is that the web server can use its own log files to extract information about visitors, without relying on cookies or JavaScript. Most hosting companies offer free web analytics software as part of their hosting plan. AWstats and Webalizer are just two of the more popular options. These are known as server-side analytics because they live and work on your web server.

So if the server-side analytics solves these problems, you may be wondering why you should even bother with Google Analytics.

So Why Do I Need Google Analytics?

Despite its shortcomings, Google Analytics still has a place in helping you optimize your website. Because of its reliance on JavaScript, Google can extract more information about the visitor such as their browser type, operating system and connection speed. Google Analytics can also alert you to significant changes in your analytics patterns. And if you’re doing any pay-per-click advertising in Google, Analytics is an absolute must.

For these reasons, most webmaster will use both server-side analytics on their web hosts and Google Analytics. Combined together, these programs will give you a better idea of who’s coming to your website and why.

We will help you interpret the Google Analytics -- not really about the how many how much --it’s about the why ?