Webmasters love tools, but how many do you need? Do you need every single tool available or can you get by with just a few. Most popular 2018. Search Engine Optimization Journal has compiled a list of essential webmaster tools – the ones you can’t get by without:
- Keyword Research Tool – You can spend thousands of dollars on some fancy gadget with bells and whistles or you can opt for the free version that does the job. Google’s Keyword Research Tool works for everyone.
- Link Popularity Check – You’ll need to check your link popularity from time to time. Again, you don’t need a bunch of fancy tools with bells and whistles. Marketleap not only reports your link popularity but it also tells you what your search engine saturation is. Two tools in one.
- Analytics – You can’t fix what you don’t measure. Know your stats. Again, you don’t have to spend a lot of money when you can get it all for free from Google.
- Code-to-Text Checker – Code-to-Text ratio is a very important measure of how well you’ve SEOd your website. Too much code could slow your load time. Know whether your website passes must with SEOChat’s code-to-text checker.
There are other really cool tools you could add to your arsenal. If you thought I was going to say an HTML editor or CMS, well, you can have them but are they essential? If you build your site with a CMS then you don’t need the HTML editor, and vice-versa. But if you want to build a website and you need tools, these tools are the bare minimum essentials. Don’t do anything without them.
Premium WordPress Themes – Advanced Segmentation
Google Analytics just keeps getting better and better. The Google Analytics blog recently announced that it has added advanced segmentation as a feature. The implications for usage and reporting here go far beyond what is amenable to running a PPC campaign. You can also segment your organic traffic.
What is a segment? Here’s a good definition straight from the Google Analytics blog:
Usually, it refers to a subset of visitors whose behavior you would like to see and analyze.
So if you want to segment your visitors into paid search and organic search and then break each of those down into traffic that has converted to sales, that’s advanced segmentation. You can see whether your organic search campaign is converting more visitors or your PPC campaign is converting more. With that level of analysis available to you, you can do some awesome planning and tweaking to your search engine marketing efforts. Don’t you agree?
The benefits to advanced segmentation are humongous. The problem for most small businesses will be in finding the time to learn all the new features and how to use them. That’s why it may be in your best interest to hire a professional to assist you. Let them handle the advanced segmentation details so you can focus on what you do best.
Premium WordPress Themes – Flash Video
Ever wonder how many people are watching your videos and responding to the offers directly from the video? Well, now you can. Google Analytics has announced tracking for Adobe Flash.
From the looks of things you’ll be able to use the Google Analytics tracking code to keep track of several stats regarding your videos including
- Embeds
- Microsites
- Widgets
- Flash-based games
That’s good news.
What you’ll be able to know about the people watching your videos include
- How many
- Are they targeted?
- Is the video marketing working?
In other words, you’ll be able to know if your online videos are leading to conversions. If not, how can you change that? That’s powerful information and I think it will increase the number of the people who start using online video to promote their brands.
The tracking code will track more than just Adobe Flash, and this is perhaps the best news about Google Analytics’ announcement. The formats supported are
- Flash visual component
- Flash AS3 library
- Flex MXML component
- Flex AS3 library
Plus, the tracking code is open source so it just keeps getting better! If you’ve been daydreaming about the ability to track your video marketing campaigns then now’s your chance. Have at it.
WordPress Themes Premium – Cadillac Status
Google Analytics recently added a couple of new features that are incredibly useful. The first feature is a motion chart. If you are a new user of Google Analytics you may not have this feature yet, but if you’ve had an account for a while then you’ve likely got it. Summarily, motion charts allow you to see statistics trends in video so that you can actually see the trending in action. It’s a pretty cool feature and you can learn more about it at the Google Analytics Blog.
There are also two other features that are in beta: Custom Reporting and Advanced Segments.
With custom reports you can define the statistics that are important to you. If you run multiple PPC campaigns and use a landing page for both PPC and organic search then you can use custom reporting to segment your statistics and break it down even into geographic targeting. There is no real limit to what you can do with custom reporting.
Advanced Segments is a feature that allows you to group certain types of visits together. For instance, visits where a site visitor stars a conversion process then backs out could be grouped together in one segment. This allows you to break down your marketing to individual and more specialized segments. Again, there is no limit to how you can use this feature for your website.
If you are not using Google Analytics then I highly recommend that you start today.
Premium WordPress Themes – Is Your Website
The Google Webmaster Central blog paints a vivid picture of an innocent website that gets mixed up in bad company and becomes the carrier of malicious malware. Could that happen to you?
Sure. I think it could, and if you don’t take precautionary measures it just might. Here’s a little snippet of what Google had to say:
The good news is that your grandmother is still kind and loves turtles. She isn’t trying to start a botnet or steal credit card numbers. The bad news is that her website or the server that it runs on probably has a security vulnerability, most likely from some out-of-date software. That vulnerability has been exploited and malicious code has been added to your grandmother’s website. It’s most likely an invisible script or iframe that pulls content from another website that tries to attack any computer that views the page. If the attack succeeds, then viruses, spyware, key loggers, botnets, and other nasty stuff will get installed.
That’s pretty gruesome. Your grandmother is a sweet old lady who wouldn’t harm a fly. Everyone knows that. And when your best friend Bob’s grandmother lands on your grandmother’s cooking website, well, things can get really nasty, and I’m not talking about bread dough falling flat. Is there protection for your grandmother? What can a webmaster do to prevent this type of hack from taking place on their site?
First, make sure that you don’t “hang out” in bad neighborhoods. Research the server that your site is located on and try to find out what other kinds of sites are on it. If possible, get a dedicated server, which is a server that your site and your site alone sits on. It’s more expensive, but you won’t have to worry about bad guys in your neck of the woods.
CMS systems are particularly vulnerable to attacks. They are easily hacked unless you go through the trouble to secure them properly. Make sure that you do. Better yet, code your site in HTML and CSS, if possible. Coded sites are less vulnerable to hacks.
You can also request a malware review of your website from Google. It’s best to do that if you think you may have been hacked or if you have just cleaned up your site and you want to be sure you got it all.
From time to time you probably want to search out your own sites on Google and see if you get the message “This site may harm your computer” associated with it. When you log into your Google Webmaster Tools account you should get a notification from Google that your site has been flagged. If you see one of those then it’s time to take action. Google will not give you advance warning so you need to take action as soon as you see the message. You will lose traffic if you don’t clean it up because if you’re seeing the message then it is appearing in the Google SERPs when people search for information that you provide.