SEM Blog

One of the biggest issues when it comes to working as an SEO is time. Time is a four letter word that the average person never has enough of and that any SEO worth their salt will underestimate. Whatever the job you’ve accepted or are working on it, multiply the time you claim it’s going to take by 1.5, and if you’re lucky that’s where you’ll end up. Any SEO who tells you they do it in less time then they quote or even on time outsources a majority of their work.

While outsourcing may work for some, it doesn’t work for everyone. So for those of you out there looking to keep your income in your pocket while preventing your friends and family from abandoning you, here’s a list of 3 tips that will help you squeeze some extra time out of your day, specifically your morning.

1. Use iGoogle For, Well, Everything:
   By now you’ve probably amassed a significant amount of RSS feeds for SEO blogs that you look through daily. Instead of popping each open, take advantage of iGoogle’s widget feature and load up all your feeds on there. iGoogle is full of great widgets that can really help you out, like the Google Webmaster Tools and a focused news monitor to keep an eye on the niche your site is in. Also, make sure to set up your Gmail account as a widget too to make the entire process even easier. Now when you load up your web browser before your morning cup of coffee is ready, you’ll be able to get up to speed before you’ve added the sugar.
2. Monitor Your Threads With FireFox Forum Additive:
   You read or posted on those forum threads for a reason, so why not organize them and save yourself time. Instead of simply bookmarking them all and cluttering up your most likely disorganized folders, Forum Additive allows you to monitor whichever threads you choose for as long as you like, popping up notifications in your status bar. You can download Forum Additive here.
3. Listen To Your Podcasts In The Shower Or Car:
   With the incredible amount of SEO podcasts out there, chances are you’ve got at least a few you want to listen to each week. Instead of turning them on and ignoring the podcast and your work while you’re at your computer, try turning them on in a place where you can’t get any work done: the shower or the car. Much more efficient. Remember to actually download you podcasts to your system and upload it to your mp3 player before you hop in either.

One of the most useful tools that any webmaster can have installed on their site is Google Analytics. Having the power to either personally view, or invite others to view statistics for your site such as the number of visitors to your site, what keywords users are finding your site through, how long they spent on your site, and plenty more. Just like when Google had said “enough” to paying for 411 information, thus releasing 1-800-GOOG-411 for free, this is a fully functional web analytics software that they offer for free as well.

To set up your Google Analytics account, simply register for any or all of your personal websites and then add the html code assigned to each site. After Google Analytics has a chance to gather the information on your site (I recommend giving it at least a day or two before you start following the information), you’ll be given several different options on how you can view the information that it collects.

The Visitors tab shows you everything you could want to know about who visits your site, down to the country and browser that they’re using.

The Traffic Sources tab shows you what sites referred your visitors over and keywords used to find your site, as well as what percentage of your total traffic came directly to your site, was referred to your site, or came from a search engine. This tab also includes your Google AdWords campaign and regular campaign controls, which allow you to monitor the results of specific actions that you’ve done to increase traffic.

The Content Tab gives you statistical information on the pageviews, unique views and bounce rate. It’s very useful to find out which pages people are entering through the most, leaving from, and what ones are viewed the most.

It also has it’s own Goals tab which you can manually configure if you have a specific goal you would like to achieve traffic wise. It provides you with enough information to let you know how close to succeeding you are and how long you have left and what’s working the best to achieve those goals.

There’s really no excuse not to have Google Analytics set up on your site, considering how useful it is and that it’s free. The ability to add another Gmail account on to view your statistics works great too if you need advice or want to hire on an SEO/SEM.

FYI, if your site exceeds 5 Million page views for month, unless you’re a Google AdWords member as well, you won’t see anymore information than the initial 5 Million. Hopefully that won’t inconvenience you too much.

Below you’ll find a screen shot from the Google Analytics page for LeopardDocks.com - Submit, Download, and Search Custom Leopard Docks. Click the thumbnail to see it full sized.

We’ve all come to accept the fact that Google really is the top dog when it comes to the search engine world, but that doesn’t mean that their tools are the best way to find out your sites visibility and reach. Relying on one source for this information is never smart anyways, the guys over at SEOmoz created what they call the “Page Strength Tool”. Where Google relies only on its own information, the Page Strength Tool pulls its information from not only Google, but Yahoo, Wikipedia, DMOZ, Alexa, de.licio.us, and Technorati to compile its information.

But what exactly does it give you for information?

• Number of links pointing to your full URL
• Number of links pointing to your domain (only important if you didn’t enter your domain in the search)
• SERP rank for the first four words of your sites title tage
• Age of your domain
• Incoming links from .edu domains
• Incoming links from .gov domains
• Your Alexa Ranking
• Number of results Google lists when searching your site
• Percentage of links leading from your domains homepage to the site you have searched
• Total number of Technorati related links
• Total number of searches for your site at del.icio.us
• Your DMOZ listings
• Number of links to your site from Wikipedia
• Google Page Rank for the site you searched and the domain

That seems like a lot of information in one place, and it definitely is, but as we said earlier, you can’t simply rely on one source! Use this tool to get a quick glance of your site to know where you need to make some changes. Also, you can run the information from your site against your competitors and get a fairly detailed read out of what they’re doing right or wrong that you may not have addressed.