By : Nidhi Gupta

Before you make drastic changes to your website after a rocky search engine update, take time to study your web server logs, changes in traffic to your site, and your ranking in the search engines.

Making Changes Before Analysis

Making rash decisions when you are hearing one thing then another from forum postings and articles is not the best choice to make. Much of the talk about fluctuations in the search engine rankings is just that–talk. Cold hard facts come from established tests of what is going on and why. Don’t jump ship before examining what is going on with your website first. Panic will lead you nowhere.

Basic search engine fundamentals:

Search Engine Rankings Fluctuate

First, you need to know that search engine rankings fluctuate; that is just the way it is. Google is a prime example of ranking changes happening throughout the day. The best way to find out how you are faring is to study the traffic coming to your site over time. Nope, not just a day or two, try a week or two at least to see if your rankings return. A search engine update may last a week before finishing and the rankings settle. Most importantly, are you receiving traffic at your website? Are you still making sales? Okay then, something is working. Don’t jump on the “change everything” bandwagon. Pay attention to what is true in regard to your website.

No One Knows Algorithms Like The Search Engines

The truth is much of the talk about organic (natural) search engine marketing information is speculative. The people who know exactly what the search engine is doing are the engineers who created it, and they are not going to give away their secrets. This means that understanding what happens when updates occur may be difficult to pin down. Keeping tabs with leaders in the industry through articles, forum postings and blogs may give you a general idea of what is happening. Take that information and then apply it to what is actually happening with your website traffic and sales.

You Need A Log Statistics Program

If you do not take anything else away with you from this article be sure you heed this advice: you need a log statistics program in place. With a good log statistics program you will be able to see various reports showing the number of unique visits taking place on your website, what keyword phrases visitors use to find your pages, what pages are being visited, which search engines are being used to find your website, and much more. Knowing what the “normal” website traffic of your website is will give you a good idea of what may be actually changing over time when updates do occur.

Resubmitting Doesn’t Help

Don’t resubmit your web pages in the crush of an update. Search engines have crawlers, known as search engine robots or spiders that are able to pick up a web page through links in order to add it to the search engine databases. For this reason you do not need to submit your pages to search engines anymore. Even if you mysteriously go from “top ten” to number 500 in the rankings, the fact that you are still listed means that you are still in the search engine’s database and you do not need to resubmit. Watch search engine robot activity in your server logs and you will be able to see when your web pages are being revisited by the robots.

Google PageRank Should Not Rule Your Life

So many people fixate on Google’s PageRank. You should be more concerned about the traffic coming to your website, sales, the amount of content on your site and the number of on topic or directory backlinks you have acquired. PageRank is part of a much bigger equation of over 100 ways in which Google evaluates your website. Don’t forget about the traffic that comes from the other search engines as well. Google may not always be the leader in search engines, keep current with other major search engine players in the industry.

Common Sense Makes Sense

Use common sense. If you are a small business you can ill afford to make changes that may adversely affect your bottom line. Observation and patience will gain you more than quick fixes. The true test of an update is watching the search engine results settle over at least a week or two worth of time, then analyze the situation, and see what happens from there.

Moderation may be helpful, whether in gaining backlinks, making website changes or your reactions to changes. Don’t panic. If it isn’t broken…don’t fix it.

Get More Details At : Searchinnovation.com

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By : Admin

Google has come up with new abilities. These may be said as the new features of Google Analytics that it has recently added to its toolkit! And this has really strengthened it. Google Analytics was already one of the most popular online analytic tools and with this upgrade it is surely going to jump high!

These upgradations were most requested by the Google Analytics users. As on 18th July, it has said bye-bye to the older version!

Let us now summarize these features!

• Clickable URLs: All URLs displayed within each report will now link directly to the external pages in order to navigate with them. These external outbound links are available in the Referring Sites, Top Content, Top Landing Pages, and Top Exit Pages reports.

• Increased Number of Data Row per Page: Google Analytics interface now has the ability to view up to 500 rows per page!

• Bounce Rate Increase or Decrease: Bounce rate increases are now shown in red which is not good and bounce rate decreases are shown in green that is really good!

• AdWords Integration: It’s now easier to add an AdWords account to an existing Google Analytics account which has improved the ability to link AdWords accounts.

• Hourly Reporting: All reports are now updated on an hourly base. It allows you to select whether you want to see your data by day or by hour.

• Cross Segmentation by Network Locations: Many users were upset with the fact that you couldn’t cross segment reports based on network location, but now that capability has been added. Ability to cross segment reports based on network locations. Now you can segment your ISP by whatever field you want, even user-defined.

• Report Linking Issue Fixed: Reports that are newly added to the dashboard now have their data properly linked to their more detailed versions.

• Smoother Registration: Some countries have been added to the list menu in Step 2 of the Account Activation process. The list is now consistent with available country choices in AdWords.

• Translation Errors Fixed: Some translation errors and omissions in the interface and Help Center have been corrected.

• Search Engine Detection: The list of French search engines has been updated to include aol.fr, club-internet.fr, and voila.fr. US search engines now include mama.com.

• Added Support: Google Analytics has also added more Help resources to the Email Reports interface.

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By : Nidhi Gupta

• Visits

  A visit is a series of actions that begins when a visitor views their first page from your site, and ends when the visitor leaves your site or remains idle for a period of time (usually 30 minutes). Looking at visit trends over time for your site is an effective way to measure the overall impact of your optimization efforts. Although there are usually seasonal and cyclical factors that affect visitor traffic, the more history you can collect, the better you will be able to isolate, identify and measure SEO changes that were responsible for the increase in traffic volume. It is also important to measure conversions or leads to ensure the traffic you are attracting consists of visitors genuinely interested in your content. For example, in your keyword selection, you may have chosen a term that was too general and that has attracted a different audience than you intended.

• Page Views

  In order to view a web page with embedded images, a browser must retrieve multiple files. The page and its embedded files counts as a single page view. Understanding how many page views and which pages are being viewed is important in gauging the effectiveness of keywords research and selection. Knowing how many visitors viewed a specific product or category page is a very good indication of the success of selecting and optimizing for a specific key phrase.

• Referrals

  A referral is a web page that contains a link to one of your site pages that was used by a visitor to get to your site. One of the most useful search engine reports in WebTrends, a leading provider of web analytics solutions, is the Search Phrases report. This report will give you a count of key phrases for each search engine. Understanding where your referrals are coming from is essential in fine tuning your keywords. Most of your traffic will come from search engines, but not all traffic. You will also receive traffic from other non search engine sites linking to your site. The Search Phrases report is also useful in what it does not show. Target keywords that do not show on a search phrase report should raise a flag and prompt investigation to determine the cause.

Get More Details At: Marketposition.com

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