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Google Search Engine Optimization Tools
Any search engine professional will tell you – to succeed, you need the right tools. Tools to evaluate keywords, tools to gauge your competition, tools to get backlinks.
Without the right tools, even the best SEO professionals in the world won’t be able to get very far.
What are the most important tools you should know about? Here are some of the most important tools for Google search engine optimization.
==> Backlink Checking Tools
Backlink checking tools allow you to figure out exactly how strong your competition is for any given keyword before you begin a campaign.
It also allows you to reverse engineer strategies that are already working for other people in your industry. If you can figure out what’s already working and do it even better than your competitors, you have a very good chance of success.
Two great backlink checking tools are Open Site Explorer and Majestic SEO. Both of these tools have free versions that give you quite a bit of data, along with a paid version with even more data.
You can also use Yahoo Site Explorer and Bing Webmaster Tools to check backlinks; though both of these tools have serious drawbacks.
==> Submission Tools
If you’re doing mass backlinks using a social bookmarking website or article marketing, you’re going to want to have a few programs that do it for you.
For example, if you’re regularly submitting content to social bookmarking websites, you’ll probably want to use a tool like Bookmarking Demon or Ping.fm. These tools will submit new content to a wide array of social media websites all at the click of a button for you.
If you’re doing article submissions, you’ll either want to use a submission program like Article Submitter or use a service like iSnare.
==> Market Research Tools
There are several market research tools on the market that offer stellar keyword research and niche research capabilities.
For one, Google’s own Google Keyword Tool is still the best tool out there for raw traffic data. If you’re just trying to figure out how much traffic certain search terms get, it’s one of the fastest and easiest places to get data.
Another tool that’s been taking off rapidly is Market Samurai. In addition to search volume, Market Samurai will also evaluate the competitiveness of each keyword you type in and give you a rough gauge of how much you can expect to earn in that market if you successfully rank.
==> How Much of SEO Is in the Tools?
Though not having the right tools can prevent you from succeeding, having the right tools doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll succeed.
You need to use the tools in the right way to get the results you’re looking for. If you want to get ranked, tools can help you get there faster, but they can’t do the bulk of the real work for you.
The Importance of Tracking the Performance of Your Website
A lot of beginning web marketers will launch websites without any kind of tracking on them. This is okay in the very beginning stages of launching a website, but the moment you decide that the website is more than a hobby and is something you actually want to make money from, you should install tracking right away.
Why?
The Very Basics: How Is Your Website Doing?
If you don’t even track the rudimentary things, such as how much traffic your website is getting, how many people are coming back to your website after leaving and other basic metrics, you’ll have no idea how your website is doing at all.
If your website is starting to get serious traffic, that means an opportunity to make money. If you don’t have tracking installed, you won’t know when that happens.
In addition to the basics, there are a lot of other benefits of tracking some of the more advanced metrics.
Using Metrics to Rank Well in Search Engines
With the Panda update, Google has publically stated that they’re using visitor metrics much more heavily now in their ranking algorithms.
That means that pages where people stay longer will tend to rank higher. Pages where users click and then never come back to Google also rank higher, as that probably means they found the answer to their question on your site. Pages which users don’t bounce from and instead go to other pages on your site will rank higher.
These are just a fraction of the metrics Google is now considering in their ranking algorithm. If you want your website to rank, you need to be consistently monitoring things like return rate, bounce rate and exit rate to improve them over time.
Tracking Performance to Immediately Improve Cashflow
Some metrics may not immediately improve your bottom line. Improvements in other metrics, however, can immediately improve your cashflow.
For example, what’s your current visitor to email sign-up rate? What’s your email to conversion rate?
By tracking these two metrics, you can immediately add more cash to your bottom line. More importantly, any improvements you make to these metrics will last over time, paying off for months and years.
Improving the Non-Tangibles of Your Business
How useful are people finding your website? How many people feel like your site is resourceful enough that they come back? How many people post things from your site to their Facebook status?
These are metrics that won’t necessarily add to your bottom line right away. However, they’ll result in more links, more visitors and more community goodwill. In the long run, that’ll turn into more visitors and more cash.
These are some of the many reasons you should be tracking the performance of your website. Without good tracking, you’re essentially flying blind. By tracking and measuring your metrics, you’ll be able to refine and improve your website over time.
Exit Rate and Bounce Rate – What’s the Difference?
Exit rate and bounce rate are two metrics that sound very similar but in reality are very different. They can both be used to gauge how well you’re doing in terms of content quality and user behavior. Here’s what each of these means.
What Does Bounce Rate Mean?
Your bounce rate is the number of people who leave your website without visiting any other page. It’s measured on a page level, so you can see your bounce rate from any particular page.
A high bounce rate on a page generally means users aren’t satisfied in some way. It could be that the content isn’t good enough. It could be that your navigation structure is confusing. It could be any number of things.
The bounce rate won’t tell you exactly what to fix, but it does give you a good idea of whether a page is working or not.
Generally a bounce rate of 55% or higher is considered quite bad. If you’re over 50%, that means over half of your visitors are simply leaving your site. On the other hand, anything 35% or lower is considered stellar.
What Does Exit Rate Mean?
Your exit rate is the number of people who leave your website from that particular page.
Exit rate can be a bit of a mixed bag. A high exit rate doesn’t necessarily mean users aren’t satisfied. For example, if you have a step-by-step guide, it’s only natural that users will leave your site at the last page of your guide.
Your exit rate can be used to compare the effectiveness of different kinds of pages. So if one content page has a drastically different exit rate than another page, you might have to seriously look at the higher exit rate page.
A Few Examples:
Just to clearly illustrate the difference between bounce rate and exit rate, here are a few examples.
Example 1: A user comes to your website and leaves without clicking a link. That counts as both an exit and a bounce from that page.
Example 2: Someone came to this page from another page on your site, then leaves your website. This counts as an exit, but not a bounce.
Example 3: Someone comes to this page from another page on your website, then goes to another page on your website. This is neither a bounce nor an exit. It will count as an exit from the page they leave from.
As you can tell, though these two metrics are related, they aren’t the same thing. The bounce rate can be used to identify weak pages, while the exit rate needs to be treated a little more carefully. When using exit rate as a metric, make sure to ask yourself why a page’s exit rate is low or high rather than just looking at the number.
How to Improve Your Blog Bounce Rate
Your bounce rate measures the number of people who come to your blog and don’t visit any other post or page on your blog. Naturally, the higher the bounce rate, the less exposure you’re getting as the visitors see less of your content.
Also, bounce rate is starting to play more and more of a role in search engine optimization (SEO). Google is starting to pay less and less attention to links and more attention to on-page metrics. They can get these metrics from the Google Toolbar, Chrome and Google Analytics.
In short, having a lower bounce rate means you’ll have more satisfied readers, as well as a higher chance of ranking well in search engines.
Here’s how to improve your bounce rate.
Check All Browsers
Check for browser compatibility on all browsers. If your site doesn’t look right in one browser, chances are all users of that browser will leave your site.
Even if the browser only has 15% penetration, you’re still losing 15% of your traffic. Make sure to check all the major and even smaller browsers: Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari.
Also check how your site looks on a smartphone.
Cluster Your Information
Instead of having just one piece of stand-alone content, try to publish your content in groups.
For example, if you own an origami website, don’t just make one page of content around how to make a T-Rex dinosaur. Make a cluster of origami content around how to make all kinds of dinosaurs.
Also try to give a clear next step at the end of every page or post. Give them further reading.
Segment Your Traffic
Not everyone coming to your site is looking for the same thing. If someone came from a search engine, chances are they’re looking for the answer to a very specific query. On the other hand, someone from a banner ad campaign may be in more of a “browsing” mood.
Different kinds of traffic should land on different kinds of pages. Different keyword traffic should land on different pages. Make sure you’re serving exactly the right kind of pages to users who’re most likely to want to see those pages.
Test Your Above the Fold
The things that show up above the fold on your website will have a bigger effect than just about anything else you can do from a content perspective.
Test different kinds of headlines to see what gets the lowest bounce rate. Try different headers. Switching out your old header for a new header can have a massive positive or negative effect on your site-wide bounce rate. Test different headers to see what gets the best results.
These are a few things you can do to immediately improve your bounce rate. A lower bounce rate may not immediately put cash in your pocket, but is essential to the long-term health of your business.
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