If you have a website, then you should have stats for it - your web designer will probably have provided them for you.

There are lots of different programs out there that will give you web statistics, and many are free. One of the most popular is Google Analytics, because it means going right to the source and (in theory) getting the best data. Also, because of Google's humungous budget, Analytics has a lot of fancy graphics and functionality.

 

The kind of data you get can be anything from how many visitors your site gets to what time of day they came, how long they stayed, which pages they visited and in what order, what country they're in, how they came across your site and much, much more.

It's important to check out your stats and keep and eye on them, because the information can be used to fine tune your site and gauge performance.

However, it's easy to become obsessed with these numbers. This is bad idea for several reasons. First of all, traffic doesn't directly translate into sales. Revenue and profit are much more important - if you have millions of visitors, but no sales, then you have nothing.

Secondly, while you're analysing your stats, you are not spending time on more important things, such as running or promoting your business.

Finally, if you're looking too closely at your stats in an attempt to increase traffic, then the chances are you'll start being tempted to 'game' the system by tweaking, rather than focussing on just creating quality and value for your customers. As Google is constantly updating their algorithm and trying to make it even better at returning good results, SEO work based on complicated link text targetting, keyword density and the like is going to be fragile and could come tumbling down at any moment. Whereas, good quality content is robust and should stand the test of time.

Sentiva offer web design services in Leeds.

Like most things, there's no clear and straightforward answer to this question - it depends on a lot of factors.

For those of you that aren't sure what PayPerClick (PPC) is, it's basically where you pay Google for particular positions in the listings. These are kept separate from the (sacred) natural listings, which you can't buy a position in, no way, no how. For a more detailed explanation of what PPC is and how it works, read our article.

In fact, you don't actually pay to be displayed in the position, you only pay when someone clicks the link and goes to have a look at your site. Just hanging out there (or getting the 'impression' to give it its technical term) is free. So you pay for each click. Pay per click. Get it?

We've found PPC to be one of the most effective forms of marketing we've undertaken - the others being newspaper adverts, radio adverts, flyers mailouts and highly targeted mailshots. Having said that we're not professional marketers, so it may be that we just didn't carry out the other campaigns as well as we could.

The reason it's so effective is because you really are only paying for people who are interested in your products (unlike the newspaper, where there are all kinds of people who will see your adverts, most of whom aren't your target market).

Whether it's going to make money for your business or not depends on how competitive your target key phrases are, how niche your products and services are and how well you design your campaigns. However, it's fairly easy to test the water, so it's probably worth a try.

If you'd like to learn more about having an effective website and how to improve your search engine optimisation, visit our site.

Sentiva is a web design company serving Leeds and Reading.

Are you a business owner? Are you listed on Google local business centre? (Recently renamed as Google Places).
If you answered yes to the first question and no to the second, then you're missing out.
You can think of Google Local Business Centre / Google Places as Google's Yellow Pages - you can have a free listing there, giving details of your business address, phone number, website and much more. Then if someone searches for your services in your location on Google, your business will be listed above all the regular results.
It only takes a few minutes to set up and could mean massive exposure for your business, completely free - so what are you waiting for?
Click here to sign up now...
Of course, all of the websites we make are listed on Google Local business Centre as a matter of course.
If you'd like more free advice on making the most of your website, click here.