By Brendan Egan

Well, blogging has become the new pink in the internet world. Almost everyone has their own blogs and websites however some are more well known than others. Maybe the popular blogs have more flare, maybe they are more creative or maybe they are just easier to find. And that is exactly what you need to earn more viewers for your page, to create an SEO (that’s Search Engine Optimization) friendly blog. And here are five great tips to get you started.

1. SEO Plug-ins

The first step you need to do is to create a Uniform Resource Locater so others can find your blog easily. This is a very important thing because having plug-ins allows you to manage title, address, and other vital parts of a message. It is important that you make all information as clear as you can so they can fit with the keywords on your blog.

2. Write a quality content

Don’t be lazy! Write a witty and relevant post that can attract more viewers. When you write a post that is as short as: “we’re having a sale come to our store.” then you might as well be sending a text message to your friend. But no, you’re not just randomly sending a message to someone you’re writing about something important so you have to make it seem important for your readers as well. Take the previous sentence and use it as a header after your title. Then with that in mind expand the topic into a post 200 to 500 words long. Remember be creative and funny without leaving out the important details.

3. Never copy/paste

Plagiarism is an unforgivable crime for us writers. It is never a good idea to just go and copy the works of other people and paste it on your blog claiming it as your own. Not only is it rude to the person you stole the work from but it is also bad for your blog’s reputation. So keep in mind that you are hurting yourself just as much as you are hurting the real writer. If by chance you saw something that inspired you and you want to share it on your blog then you have to credit the person who really wrote it by putting a link to their website in your post. That way you’re telling your readers that you are not taking claim of the contents you posted.

4. Categorize or tag your messages

For other people to find your blog faster, you need to arrange all categories properly and you can do this if you add tags on your posts. You would need a blog tagging software to make tags in your message and then link them to a page that have a similar content . This makes it more convenient for your visitors.

5. Find other blogs and write quality feedback

First of all comment spamming and writing a good feedback are two very different things. You won’t be helping the blogger to improve their posts by telling them their post was “good or awesome”. A comment should be serious and formal at the same time with a hint of warmth that can earn you a connection with the blogger. But most importantly: your comment has to be relevant to the blogger’s post.

While following these steps won’t get you to the first page of search results for a competitive keyword like “Stock Market”, it will get you to the first page for long tail keywords, for example “Learn How To Trade Options In The Stock Market”. I’ve seen dozens of posts on our blog and our client’s blogs get ranked on the top page of search results just by following these simple tips, and chances are following these suggestions will only take you an extra 10-15 minutes per blog post, but will help drive much more traffic to your blog.

This is a post from The Web Optimist – SEO in The Desert.

Five Ways to Create an SEO Friendly Blog is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

By Michael Cash

Are you ready for your business to join the 21st Century? Before you answer this question, let me ask you another one: Are you ready to start a blog for your business? For many, the prospect of learning how to properly start, maintain, and optimize a blog for search engines is a monumental task that simply never gets done. But don’t let the enormity of the task stop you from doing it! You could be missing out on thousands of customers simply because your business has not joined the blogosphere. Setting up your business’s blog for search engine optimization (SEO) is the topic of this writing. The benefits of SEO far outweigh the labor it takes to set it up for your blog.

Basically, SEO is the foundation your blog needs to be ranked highly by search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. It contains two parts: On-Page and Off-Page SEO. On-Page SEO are the things that you control about your blog, such as content, domain name, and plug-ins. Off-Page SEO are things outside of your control, such as links to your site from other blogs. Since On-Page SEO is directly affected by what you do, we will focus on that here.

Here are the things you can do to optimize your blog for search engines:

1. Domain Name - The first part of establishing your blog is choosing a domain name for it. Your domain name should contain the following:
   • Keyword(s) that relate to your blog
   • Be short and catchy if possible
   • Have the name of the blog in it

While sometimes it is not possible to fulfill these criteria, hitting 2 of the 3 will help optimize your blog for search engines.

2. Use keywords in your titles – This is important for SEO, as users who are searching for certain blogs or blog content will be directed to your site from a search engine if you have searchable keywords in your blog titles. That being said, don’t put too many keywords into one title, as this may make the title sound unnatural.
3. Optimize the body – The body of your blog posts is often overlooked when it comes to SEO, but the first and last paragraphs of your article are very important. Whatever your chosen keyword is for that post, use it two times in the first paragraph and once in the last paragraph. In addition, try and place it within the middle paragraphs a couple of times to grab greater search engine attention. However, DO NOT repeat your keyword too many times in the article, or search engines (specifically Google) will label it as keyword spam and this will ruin any SEO the blog could have had.
4. Use links in your posts – Using links in your posts to link important words to previous blog posts will assist in SEO. Search engines consider blogs that utilize links more authoritative than those that don’t, and will rank your blog higher than others. But once again, don’t overdue the links, as readers find them distracting and search engines dislike an overabundance of them.
5. Always have unique, interesting content – Search engines like interesting, original content to give to their users. Simply copying and pasting articles from other sources will be recognized by a search engine and will not optimize your article at all. Moreover, your content should be informative and fresh to enable SEO for your blog.

Now that you have the tools to utilize the benefits of SEO, it’s time to start that blog!

This is a post from The Web Optimist – SEO in The Desert.

Blogging with Google in Mind is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

If you have ever Googled your name, you should know how vital it is to manage your reputation online. Each day, thousands of people are looking online for information on others by searching using Google and other major search engines. Since information is very readily available online, managing your reputation is as vital as ever.

Fortunately, reputation management is not very difficult, though it takes much work. The following are tips which can help you ensure that your reputation online does not get impacted negatively by what is being said about you.

1. Establish where you stand

The first step towards reputation management is Googling your name. Try it with and without quotes. Check each of the results in the first two pages of Google. Are there any negative posts or comments that you would want removed?

2. Set a Google alert

Go to Google and set an alert for your name. Google will then send you an email to confirm that you want to receive the updates. When you accept the alert, you will receive a notification every time your name is posted on the web.

3. Contact website owners to have your name removed

If there are websites that have your name and an undesirable commentary, contact these sites and request to have that information removed. Quite often, website owners will be willing to remove your name and inappropriate information.

4. Purchase a domain containing your name

When you add web pages and sites associated with your name, negative search results will be relegated to lower Google rankings. Visit a provider of website URLs and purchase a domain with your name. Once you own the domain, publish a web page with your personal profile.

5. Start a blog with your name

There are several free tools in the web that you can use to set up your own blog where you can publish information about yourself. Major blog sites are usually picked up by Google. After your blog is published, you might want to sign up for Technorati. Submit your blog for review will increase its popularity, improve search engine rankings and push down undesirable search results.

6. Free press release

Use free press releases site to publish positive information about yourself. This type of reputation management is simple and costs nothing. Don’t forget to use your name all through the release and in the title.

7. Author articles in your niche

Publish articles related to a specific subject in which you have some experience. Use article distribution services to create online references for your content. Ensure your articles have an author bio section that contains a link back to you main site. This is a technique that I have used extensively in promoting my diet blog which features Medifast coupons, Bistro MD promo codes and Diet to Go discounts.

This is a post from The Web Optimist – SEO in The Desert.

Tips for Managing Your Reputation Online is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

Blogging on a regular basis can be great for your SEO efforts

Here are a few things to consider when writing blogs for your website.

• Start by picking keywords that make sense for your site. These are key words that have enough search traffic, but aren’t so competitive that you will never make a dent. Insert these key words into your blogs and write your content around them.
• Second, write unique content that will be of interest to your visitors. Writing about things that have nothing to do with your product or service won’t help. If you are considering using a third party to write content for you – be careful about the quality of the content by testing them before you post the content on your site.
• Be sure to link content within your site, as search engines like to see that you are linking to appropriate pages and content. For example, if you write a blog about a product or service you offer, be sure to anchor the key words to a link about your product or services.
• When you write blogs remember what structure search engines like to see. It’s good practice to include things like putting key words in your title or headings, inserting enough key words in the article, and having a key word in your first and last sentences. However, don’t be tempted to “stuff” your content – best practices are to have key word density of 2% – 5%. More might actually hurt your SEO value.
• Finally, be sure to use social media to help gain additional exposure and back-links. Tweeting to Digging your blogs will add more fuel to your SEO fire. Asking friends to help you spread the word never hurts.

Just remember that content is the best thing you can do to add SEO value to your website, and blogging is an easy way to accomplish this. For more SEO tips, visit our blog where you can find more free property marketing resources.

This is a post from The Web Optimist – SEO in The Desert.

Tips on Using Blogging for SEO is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

Got something to say? Guest blog at The Web Optimist.

Just so you know, The Web Optimist blog is open to guest blogger articles related to SEO, VOIP and search marketing. These guest posts are free, of course (take that, Google!) and posts must be a minimum of 250 words in length.

Guest blog post in the following categories for free – SEO, PPC, Social Media, News, Reviews. All are moderated and edited. Inappropriate posts will be deleted. Be civil, folks! A total of three links are allowed within the body text (two of which can point to your own sites). Obvious spam, inappropriate or off-topic content will not be considered. In other words, if I do not like it, I will not publish it!

Simply go to the Contact page to submit your article idea. I’ll set up frequent contributors with an author’s account.

Call for Guest SEO Blog Articles is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

When I started out in web development way back in the dark ages (1998), I was doing web design for an in-house agency. Primarily, we did sites for the publications that the parent publishing company produced, but we also took on local Palm Springs area clients and built web sites for them.

It went something like this. For a certain amount of money, like $500, we’d build a ten page static web site. We’d do the design work, but the client provided images and text. We’d do the SEO as it existed in those days (title, meta tags, submit to the search engines/directories) and then there would be a monthly hosting/maintenance fee (about $50). Quarterly changes (pictures and text) were part of the fee, anything else cost extra.

Of course, the client was sort of at our mercy as they had no way to make changes themselves. They had to go through us. This could get frustrating for clients who needed frequent changes to their sites, like real estate agents or those with products that needed changing constantly.

Fast forward to today. Yes, if you really need a complicated site with a web designer, programmer and so forth, that option is definitely available more than ever. But, if what you want is a smaller site that you have complete control over and won’t cost a fortune, it can be had quickly and inexpensively.

Where you ask? Simple. Find yourself a hosting company that is WordPress friendly (most are) and that can easily install this free blog platform in the root on your hosting account (Hostgator.com and Godaddy.com are two that come to mind). Check on this before opening the account as some hosts want to place the blog in a subdirectory by default. Moving it to the root so that your domain points right at it can sometimes take some server side acrobatics that are beyond the scope of an SEO 101 reader.

What, you say, I don’t want to blog! I don’t have time to blog! Why in the world would I want to use WordPress?

The answer is that WordPress is more than just a blogging platform. It is also a content management system that gives you control over your content, pages and site features in an easy to use control panel. For instance, instead of sending text and photos off to a designer to place on your site, you just login to your WordPress admin and enter the text and upload the image in a WYSIWYG format, not unlike using a word processor (though HTML view is available, too).

And, WordPress offers the power and potential of thousands of plugins and widgets that add functionality you control that no web designer can hope to offer. For instance, I am also the editor of The Eye Zone, a blog about vision and eyewear. If you take a look at that blog, you’ll notice the large featured images section at the top of the front page. That’s a free plugin called Featured Content Gallery that installs easily. You provide the images and upload them to your hosting account. You have complete control.

But, how does this help you if you only want a web site, not a blog?

WordPress can be used as if it were a web site. You can create pages, just like on a web site and turn off comments until or unless you decide to start using the blog functionality. Since the front page of a WordPress site lists posts by default, you’ll either want to write a single post for the front page or make the front page show a designated page instead.

You do this in the WordPress admin under Settings > Reading. See image below.

Take a look at AddictionInterventionServices.com. This is a small web site that was recently changed to WordPress from my original (nice, but dated) design done several years ago. The site has eight pages, all of which the site owner can now edit himself. The video in the right nav was simply YouTube code pasted into the text widget that WordPress provides for placing code in nav bars. Simple cut and paste, no programming needed.

The same is true with the “Addiction Facts” section. That’s simply a plugin (Stray Random Quotes) code pasted into a text widget, just like the video mentioned previously.

If you look at the bottom of the pages, you’ll see social sharing links. These are provided by another free plugin, Sociable. The Link to this Page link is also a free plugin, LinkToThisPage.

This site points to the Intervention page as the home page (see image above). And, the site owner has indicated that he might want to do some blogging at some point, so he’s all set.

WordPress itself is fairly SEO friendly, but you can extend your search optimization through some great (and free) plugins like HeadSpace2, Canonical URL’s for WordPress and Google XML Sitemaps.

Need to do a redirection? With a WordPress site it’s easy with the Redirection plugin. No need to contact your webmaster/system admin.

And, there are literally thousands of themes for WordPress, free and paid, that you can use to get just the right look for whatever your site is about. There are e-commerce, real estate, SEO-ready and even Twitter-inspired group themes. Or, you have the option of hiring a theme developer.

Need something more than a few static pages? Let’s say you are an affiliate or want to pull a product feed. As they say, there’s and “app” for that, too.

For this article, I used one of my parked domains to create a shopping comparison site for Internet, wireless and wi-fi products. Using the same techniques above, the site features various pages of products all created by setting up a free DataFeedFile.com account, installing the Include It plugin, selecting merchants in my DataFeedFile.com account and saving the keyword search php code (generated through simple tools at DataFeedFile.com) in individual plain text files (example: voip.php) for the plugin to pull. I created each keyword based page (like VOIP) and pasted the Include It code (a simple text string) on each, which calls the php code from the designated keyword focused file (example: voip.php) and, voila, instant shopping comparison site!

By the way, that’s a free WordPress theme that is being used for the site. Check the footer on the site to find out which one.

If what you want to do is pull a feed into a WordPress site, take a look at the DataFeed Poster plugin. It’s not free, but very good at what it does.

I hope you can see just how powerful a WordPress driven site can be, even for those who only want a web site and have no interest in blogging. The tools, functionality and SEO capabilities that you can have yourself (no web developer needed) are incredible compared to just a few years ago, and we didn’t even touch on what you can do with Twitter and social media with plugins.

And, if you ever do want to begin blogging, something this SEO recommends, it’s just a matter of getting started because the functionality is already built into your site.

SEO 101: Need an SEO Friendly Site? Think Blog! is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

Here’s what I consider the best of The Web Optimist over the past year (in no particular order). You might not agree, but hey, it’s my blog.

1. S E O Tools & Tips - Want a look at what I consider essential tools for my day job as an SEO? Here’s what I use in my personal arsenal.

2. Robots.txt: Powerful but Picky! – The robots.txt file is a powerful tool, but you’ve got to be extremely careful with it. This post discusses one of it’s little idiosyncrasies that could easily trip you up. That’s my Lost in Space toy robot in my back yard in the photo. Yep, I wanted to be Will Robinson growing up! Such a geek!

3. Shopping Site Essentials - Got an ecommerce site and think you can do it on your own without product listings on shopping search sites? If so, you are missing out on a MAJOR opportunity to expand your product and brand exposure around the globe. Yes, it costs money to be in most of them, but you can strike gold if you know what you are doing. This post gives you some tips to get you started.

4. Beginning Viral Marketing - Want to get a campaign started that will spread like a virus but don’t have a clue how to start? Videos? Social sites? Freebies? Here are 14 clues to help you get going.

5. Grabbing the Longtail - No, I’m not talking about a cat, here. In this article I point you in the direction of ranking for multi-word search phrases, getting cheaper PPC traffic and increasing your site visits without a lot of work.

6. User Content Generation -User generated content basically turns your customers and site visitors into SEOs for you while generating fresh keyword rich content for the spiders to devour. You just need to know how to get them to contribute and this post provides some great pointers to encourage the process.

7. Online Retail Optimization: Will It Blend? - You can’t just post your product pages on the web and expect them to rank as well as they did in the days of ten blue links on the search results pages. There’s a lot more competition now that Blended Search (another term for Universal Search) has become the norm. To compete, you’ll need to optimize images, videos, feeds and more.

8. Google Personalized Search – The search giant has put a new spin on rankings by personalizing search results when you are logged into your Google account. To rank well for users who are signed in, you’ve got to get sticky and this post shows you how.

9. Annoying Speed Bumps on the Information Superhighway – C’mon, folks. Using the Internet should be easy. So why do hotels, software, hardware, web sites and even the search engines make things so hard? This is one of my rants on things that should be simple but aren’t.

10. Brand With Your Head, Not Your Gut – Using past experience with the local tourism bureau, I discuss online branding and how politics and misguided reliance on a name rather than a brand can trip up a campaign.

11. Will Trust Kill the Algorithm? – I’ve heard a lot of comments about whether Google is going social lately. The answer is a resounding yes and I blogged about it a year ago.

12. Is Universal Search Harder? – Despite the big push towards including everything AND the kitchen sink in search results, Universal Search can actually make finding what you are looking for more difficult. Sure would be nice to have an off switch!

And, I left the best for last because it wasn’t originally published on The Web Optimist, rather I guest posted over at Search Engine Journal. My 55 Quick S E O Tips Even Your Mother Would Love has been reposted here as Free eBook: 65 Quick S E O Tips Even Your Mother Would Love featuring ten more tips and a downloadable PDF file. Look for that to grow to 100 tips very soon when I update Mom’s tips in 2009!

I add to the blog as I have time. Thanks to all of you who have come back as return readers, commented, e-mailed and joined as Twitter followers. We’ll see what 2009 brings!

Happy New Year, folks!

The Best of The Web Optimist 2008 is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

So, here are a few back to basics tips to not only help you rank better, but also to drive some conversions and, hopefully, attain or maintain your “authority” status.

1. Content is still king. It’s been said before and it’s still true. Generating good content is circular. Great keyword-rich content attracts spiders which pulls your page up in the rankings where people find it and add to the content through comments and ratings which adds more content providing longtail traffic which brings more visitors to the page to create more user generated content and so forth. Whew! Never doubt the power of content for SEO!

2. Make site navigation easy for users and spiders. You want your site visitors to be able to find what they are looking for with as little effort as possible. You also want the link structure of your site to allow the search engine spiders easy access to all pages on your site. Hint – check your source code for any legacy or left over code that might include links that are invisible to the user, but visible to spiders. I know from experience that sometimes web developers/programmers leave invisible code on pages that not only bloat the size, but can contain links that only the spiders see. This can get you into trouble as it looks like you are hiding content whether you mean to or not. Clean up your code and offload any CSS or javascript that you can to external files (See On Page Factors).

3. Blog, blog, blog! – Yet another form of user generated content creation as mentioned above, blogging attracts readers and fresh content. Spiders love fresh content! See Advanced Tips for Optimizing Your Blog.

4. Get a keyword rich domain name – If you are just starting out with a new domain, this will give you automatic keyword rich inbound links. Let’s say your primary keyword is “widgets” and you snag widgets.com as your domain name. This means that whenever someone links to your domain, you’ve automatically got a keyword (widgets) anchor link in it.

5. Quality inbound links – Speaking of inbound links, quality is usually better than quantity, though Google has been known to still rank sites with a ton of junk inbound links well (See Reciprocal Linking for Ranking is Anything But Dead). To be totally white hat, Google tells us to get quality back links and that a few of those will do better than a ton of link-farm style links. Although reciprocal links appear to work for some sites, relying on them will probably not work forever, so look for quality first.

6. Electronic press releases – These are still great for helping you rank well. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. In the old days, the archived releases provided forever links to the pages linked to from them. You’ll still got some of that link love, but even more than that, good press releases can generate links from other sites that pick them up and can even generate some separate stories about your site. For instance, when the FramesFinder Virtual Eyeglass Try On was introduced by FramesDirect.com, I wrote the press release and submitted it through PRWeb.com. We got several news stories written about the online eyewear try on software, including TV reports that are still live on the web.

If you are still sending press releases by fax and mail, join the 21st Century!

Just be sure what you submit in the way of press releases is legitimate news. Too many releases are just junk and it’s easy to get the reputation of being a trashy self promoter.

7. Make sure your database is spider friendly - The last thing you need is to spend time, money and effort developing your site only to find the database or shopping cart functionality is not search engine friendly. Test before you commit. Use online tools like S E O Chat’s spider simulator tool or client spidering tools like the one built into iBusiness Promoter (IBP) to test spidering.

8. Get visitors to take action – Include clear calls to action on the page (Buy Me, Shop Now links) and make them obvious and easy to find. Make the offer compelling with incentives (free shipping, bonus items, etc.) and make ways to contact you easy and upfront (800 number, e-mail link, address, online chat). Too many online sites make contact too difficult by hiding behind a contact form and providing no other way to be contacted. That’s not a recipe for trust from either the visitor or the search engines. And, to be an authority, you need trust.

If you’re like most SEOs, you’re wearing a lot of hats (Creative, Developer, Writer, Tech, Marketing, SEO, etc.) and trying to pull so much together from so many different directions can result in some missing pieces in the puzzle. After all, the brain can only be pulled in so many ways at once. It’s easy to lose sight of obvious optimization techniques.

But, if you’re not an authority at optimizing your site for ranking and conversions, who is?

Hopefully, getting back to basics will help you to fill those empty spaces in the puzzle. A review of these basics can help put things back into perspective with any SEO campaign.

Back to Basics SEO is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

It’s a moderated directory that, at least in the beginning, will be reciprocal link based. You can submit a resource for free, but the back links will be checked and sites that remove their link back to The Web Optimist will be removed from the directory.

And, yes, I am the moderator.

To start with, I’ll include the following general categories:

1. Blogs: Blogs about search engine optimization, pay per click and related subjects.
2. News Sites: Strictly SEO news and information. No blogs, please.
3. Forums: Links to forums and discussion groups related to SEO and PPC topics.
4. Palm Springs Web Community: Links to web development and search marketing sites in the Palm Springs, CA desert area.
5. Search Friendly Directories: There are still some general directory sites out there that are search friendly and are invited to submit their links here.
6. Jobs & Recruiters: Sources for employment in the search and Internet marketing fields.

I’m open to suggestions for additional SEO and SEM related categories.

So, feel free to submit your link to the S E O Resource Directory.

Of course, if you want to be on the front page of The Web Optimist, you could always use the Tip Me link in the upper right side of almost every page on the blog.

SEO Resource Directory is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

• Check with your host. Most hosting companies offer at least some sort of bare bones log-based web analytics as part of your package. Many times this consists of something like AWStats or Webalizer, which are pretty standard and offer stats that are probably sufficient for very small sites. Study these and get familiar with some of the nooks and crannies, like where your traffic is coming from and what keywords are driving the traffic.

• Go real time. If you haven’t heard of Yahoo’s MyBlogLog, it’s an online social site that’s especially targeted to blogs, but other sites are welcome. It’s big with SEOs. In addition to all of the social networking and community building opportunities, you can pay for their statistics service ($25 per year) and see real time traffic information for all of the pages to your blog/site. All you have to do is paste some tracking code within the BODY tags of your template or pages. The information is incredible – where your traffic is coming from today, what they are clicking on within your site and what outbound links they are clicking on. Reports can be run for various time periods. It’s a hidden feature that you need to check out.

• Get a full-blown analytics package. If you’re looking for free and don’t mind Google having access to your data, sign up for Google Analytics. It’s a slick, feature-rich analytics program with most of the bells and whistles beginner SEOs could want. In fact, there is a learning curve in trying to find all of the features and figure out what they mean. Like with MyBlogLog, you have to insert tracking code on pages you want Google Analytics to follow. If you run an ecommerce site, it can even track conversions with some advanced set up.

• Do it yourself. If you don’t like the idea of Google or anyone else having access to your stats, you could run log-based analytics software on your own. This is time-consuming and, as your site grows, can become impractical because log files can be huge. You might have to download your log files and run the software to analyze them or install analytics software on a dedicated web server. One free option is WebLog Expert Lite which also offers paid versions with more features. Running log-based web analytics software used to be the norm. I’m only offering this as an option to those who are really paranoid about their data. By the way, Google also offers a log-based solution called Urchin, but, it’s definitely not free.

• Go commercial. There are zillions of commercial web analytics packages available with all sorts of wiz bang features. The problem with wiz bang is that many of us wind up banging our heads against the wall trying to figure out the wiz. From experience, I highly recommend spending time trying out trial versions of any analytics product you are considering. See if you understand how they work. Find out how available support will be for you. Some of these companies charge you a ton for the product, give you a few months of support and then want a contract for continued support and updates. Be absolutely sure about what you are buying into. One company I know of spent thousands on one of the top log-based analytics packages, couldn’t get it running properly for months, then couldn’t understand the interface once they got it running, had numerous tech and support issues and finally abandoned it altogether, losing several thousand dollars in the process. Don’t let yourself fall into that trap. Understand what you are getting.

What do most SEOs favor? An informal, very unscientific poll of my LinkedIn contacts came back with Google Analytics as the definite top choice. Again, this was a very small sample and by no means authoritative, but it does seem that Google’s freebie has its fans in the search marketing community. On the commercial side, Clicktracks and Mint were also mentioned. (Note: you’ll find people who both love and hate all of these, so test, test, test before making a final decision).

By the way, it’s worth mentioning that a log-based tracking system will track every action on your site – clicks, server calls, spidering, whatever. If you want to use analytics that depend on tracking code on your pages, be sure you have the code on ALL pages. Anything without the tracking code will be invisible to your analysis software or service.

Keep in mind that these suggestions are for newbie SEOs and not for you advanced folks out there. Some of these will seem simple to power users, but someone who has never studied web analytics in the past should find these recommendations easier options for starting out.

SEO 101: Web Analytics is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO