There are two types of people that this web analytics package is especially useful for, newbies and geeks (and yes, this does apply to me as I am a self-confessed geek).

Clicky is ideal for the newbie who has discovered the importance of visitor tracking and is finding Google Analytics too complicated.

The more experienced stat geek (I love my stats) will also love Clicky because they track more elements than Google Analytics. They even provide the stats in such a user-friendly way that you can get a stat fix with just a quick glance (this can seriously increase your general productivity, I have lost too much time reading through my website data!).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not coming down on the big G, their Analytics program is amazing, is packed full of features, is better than 99% of website analytic packages on the market, and ultimately, is free.

But, and this really is a big ‘but’, the learning curve is very steep for someone who can be considered a ‘newbie’. Additionally, quite a few people who are running a small business and have an accompanying website do not always have the time to work through the given ‘how to’ pages that Google has kindly put together.

So, why is Clicky a more powerful alternative?

Clicky Web Analytics has the traditional features you’d expect but let me share with you a few of the additional features that have me excited!

• Juicy Visitor Details
• Twitter Analytics
• Dedicated iPhone Clicky Analytics
• URL Shortener Integration

If that still hasn’t whetted your appetite, how does this sound:

• Dedicated Wordpress plugin (yes, you can track you stats directly from your Wordpress dashboard)
• Spy on your visitors

The Wordpress plugin is for self-hosted Wordpress blog users and has recently been updated by Joost De Valk, over at Yoast.com. You can download the plugin directly from the Clicky website.

A great additional feature of the plugin is it can also be configured to update your Twitter account each time you upload a new blog post; this also includes a URL  shortener. as stated above, and tracks your links.

The ‘real time visitor tracking’ [*] is what gets me really excited! This feature allows you to literally spy on what your visitors are doing on your website as they are actually doing it. This is a bit like watching a Twitter stream but instead of tweets, you are watching the pages of your website update as your visitors navigate from page-to-page.

All you need to do now is head on over to the Clicky website and sign-up for an account. You’ll gain instant access to a trial period of a pro account (no credit card required to gain access) and will be downgraded to a free account when the trial comes to an end.

To get the complete access to the full range of services I recommend you take them up on their pro account offer, it only costs $59.99 for a whole year giving you a whole 6 months for free.

The do have other packages so I recommend you visit their site now to see what is the best fit for your website.

Here’s the link again: www.GetClicky.com

To your success,

Karl Foxley

[*] For real time visitor tracking that is recording using screencast technology visit Clixpy.com.

Let’s say you have a website that is focused on selling guided walks around Derbyshire. You would create content focused pages about specific walks following all the SEO tips you’d find in our Understanding SEO article.

As your website is indexed by the search engines you would want to start checking on each of your web pages performance in the search engine result pages (SERPs), as we all know, being on the first page for a search term is where you want to be (and at the top being the optimal spot).

So, a website about walks in Derbyshire may have pages optimised for:

• walks with children in Derbyshire
• Ghost walks in Derbyshire
• Country walks in Derbyshire
• Hill walks in Derbyshire

Checking how each page is performing in the search engines for each of those particular keywords can be performed in a few ways but I want to share with you one of the coolest little desktop applications that I have come across in a while.

I’ve be fortunate enough to have access to CuteRank Pro, a Website Ranking Checker that sits nicely on my desktop.

You can download a free version and discover how to get CuteRank Pro by visiting the CuteRank website. The following will walk you through how to quickly set up your profile and monitor your rankings.

Visit the website and follow the instructions to download a copy of the CuteRank software.

After you have successfully downloaded and installed CuteRank you will need to load the software for the first time.

When you fire CuteRank up you’ll want to start by adding the domain you wish to monitor. Click on the ‘New’ button and select ‘new profile’ from the drop down menu.

This is where you input your the domain you wish to monitor.

1. Enter your URL that you wish to monitor.

2. Select the keyword you wish to monitor.

3. Select the search engines you wish to track your ranking in.

Now click OK.

1. This shows the rank for ‘polite seo‘ in the following search engines.

2. This indicates the same info but in graph format (techies love their graphs) allowing you to track your progress over a set timescale.

You would simply now add more keywords to monitor.

As you build up a collection of keywords that you are tracking you can start to export your data in pdf format or CSV.

CuteRank will only allow you to monitor a limited number of keywords unless you are using the PRO version.

Follow the link to discover how you can get your hands on the PRO version for free.

I would say that CuteRank is good at what it does, it doesn’t eat into your computers resources while it is running and it pulls back the results that you want quickly (I tested this up to 50 keywords approx).

Who is CuteRank for? Having tested CuteRank for over a week now I would say it is good for website owners who wish to monitor the performance of their website in the SERPs and it is also good for SEO Consultants who are managing multiple domains.

What’s more, with the current price tag being free and with the ability to get your hands on the CuteRank Pro version by following some simple steps then you really have nothing to lose; CuteRank gets a two thumbs up from me!

Here’s the link again: CuteRank Website Ranking Checker

To your success,

Karl Foxley

If you are not sure what I am talking about then just take a look at the screenshot below of Google Images holding my site in a frame.

Not all sites that hold your site in a frame are bad, my objection is when the offending site has ads plastered everywhere.

Another objection of mine is the traffic I get from Google Images. You see, Google Images brings me a lot of visitors that wish to copy my images to use on their websites or projects, yes, I have tracked the clicks on my site and some of my images show a high click rate indicating the visitor’s intentions.

The simple solution to this is to install a small plugin known as the Frame Buster Wordpress Plugin by Semiologic.

You can download the plugin directly from the site by visiting the Semiologic Frame Buster Wordpress Plugin page or, alternatively, you can download the plugin from the Wordpress Plugins Directory.

Below is a quick video showing the plugin in use. The video opens in a new window (sorry no sound)!

The video shows me clicking through to my site from Google Images, as the page loads, frame buster kicks and forces the site out of the frame.

I am yet to discover any negative effect to using this plugin or any penalties netted out by the search engines. I’ve been using the plugin for a few months now and I haven’t had any issues.

On a side note, Semiologic have a special Wordpress package that will help you dominate any niche with their out of the box solution. Click on the graphic below and you’ll see the whole host of pro-member only special plugins that you will not find any where else!

I hope you found this post useful.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

For a live example of this site breaking free of a frame click here.

I was looking for something that I could use on my desktop without having to fire-up a browser, I also wanting something that would check multiple domains. Guess what? I found a neat desktop app that gives me the data in a matter of seconds.

As you can see, I’ve added a few URLs for this example.

After clicking the big green ‘go’ button the little app pulls in the Google Page Rank and displays them along with their respective smiley faces.

So what are the uses for this?

We regularly monitor the Page Rank of our client websites and that of our competitors to see how they are performing in the eyes of Google. What is great about this little tool is the fact that you can save the data in a spreadsheet file and then import the info when needed; this will save you lots of time when it comes to checking the Page Rank of a large number of websites.

The name of this neat little app is PaRaMeter and it is free to download from CleverStat. Visit the website and click on the link under the download tab. The site also offers other useful tools that you may want to have a look at.

Regards,

Kelly-Anne Foxley

This post is about blogging as a way of generating targeted traffic to your business website and promotions as well as creating, growing and engaging with a community of readers.

What you will see below is a PDF document that is Day 5 of our Website Promotion Success Email Mini-Course.

I recommend you sign-up for the course and to our newsletter as you will get extra benefits that you will not get from reading the blog alone.

The report you are about to read covers the benefits of blogging for your business, how to get started and some useful resources you may find handy.

Blogging is a great way for small and medium (even large) companies to extend their reach across the major search engines.

Although there are many blogging platforms a standalone (self-hosted) blog is going to be one of the best introductions to your online business as it will allow you to continually create search engine friendly content in a intuitive way; you may like our post on Wordpress SEO plugins.

The report is short but is packed with practical information that you can start implementing straight away.

If you find the text is too small then use the buttons on the top right side of the document to switch to full screen mode or toggle page size. Enjoy!

To your success,

Karl Foxley

P.s. If you found the report useful why not leave a comment.

photo credit: Annie Mole

The services I am referring to are:

Search engine submission services for small businesses.

If you have come across these services, don’t stop, keep moving. If you are paying for such a service then cancel your payment immediately, you are wasting your money.

Let’s take a second to look at the claims that come with these services and dispel the myths that they are selling:

“We submit your website to 1000s of search engines increasing the chances of people finding your website.”

1000s of search egines? Get real!

If you are tracking your visitor statistics using Google Analytics or similar you will have very useful information at your finger tips. What I want you to do right now is to go to your Analytics account and look at your ‘Traffic Sources‘ and find the ‘search engines‘ data.

The screen-shot below was taken from my Analytics account:

How many search engines can you see?

Other than the different country variants (we are happily read across the globe) the search engines in the list are Google, Yahoo and Aol. Google has the largest share of the search engine market so having them as the main referring search engine in our site statistics is typical.

Now, can you see these 1000s of search engines in your referral stats?

I didn’t think you would!

Last question, the last time you used a search engine… which one did you use?

Returning to the claims of the search engine submissions services:

We submit your website to the search engines on a monthly basis.

Oh come on!

The big players of search, Google, Yahoo and Bing, do not need to be reminded that your website exists. If you are paying an on-going fee for such a service please terminate your payment!

Continually submitted your website to ‘anywhere’ may get you and your business website listed as a spammer.

I don’t want to confuse anyone and I understand that you may be left wondering what you should do to alert the search engines when you launch a new website .

The simple answer is that you can do NOTHING!

Google, Yahoo and Bing are powered by super computers that WILL find your website.

You can speed things up by getting some quality inbound links from authority websites pointing directly to your website. You can learn more about securing quality inbound links by following the tips in our newsletter and mini-course.

Another thing you should be doing is adding your XML Sitemap to Google so that they know what pages on your website are important to you.In doing this you may also make Google aware of pages that they have not yet indexed.

You can add your Sitemap by registering your account with Google Webmaster Tools. If you do not have an XML Sitemap you can use this free tool to have one created in a very short space of time.

You can also do the same with Yahoo Site Explorer and Bing Webmaster Center.

With this information in hand please do not pay for a search engine submission service for your business website (or any other website for that matter), the search engines will find you.

Final words, read what Google have to say about submitting your website to them (this does not include registering your site with Webmaster tools but is talking about the sumbit URL method.)

To your success,

Karl Foxley

The title of this post may suggest that I am going to be talking about myself but in actual fact I want to discuss visitor tracking and monitoring.

I use a few tools to track visitor statistics, such as Google Analytics and StatPress (a Wordpress Plugin).

What I have noticed is that I get visitors coming to this website by typing the following search term ‘Karl Foxley Marketing‘ into Google.

It makes sense to create a page specifically for this search query and give the visitors exactly what they are looking for, so before we continue:

If you are looking for an SEO service for your business website then you have come to the right place. Foxley Marketing Solutions, founded by Karl Foxley, is happy to discuss your SEO and other Internet marketing requirements with you. You can request further information by using our contact us page.

Returning to the focus of this post, are you tracking the search queries that are bring visitors to your website? If you are not, maybe it is time that you started.

Google Analytics is free, setting-up an account and registering your website can be done in a short space of time, allowing you to have a whole host of statistics at your finger tips.

Inside Google Analytics you can click on the ‘Traffic Sources‘ tab and then ‘Keywords‘ to see how people are finding your website.

Recommendations: You may see keywords and phrases that are very similar that can be grouped, why not create a content page that targets them so that your visitors now have a page that closely matches their search query.

You may see a lot of single search queries that bring visitors to your website, I wouldn’t waste too much time creating content pages for each instance of a search query as it may never be typed in again.

The reason you will want to create content pages to match search queries is simple: if you have too many search queries being met with loosely related content, searchers visiting your site will scan your content and probably leave again as your content will not meet their expectations.

By monitoring what brings searchers to your website you will be able to give them exactly what they want instead of relying on loosely related content pages, this makes the searcher happy and in return makes the search engines happy.

I hope you found this post useful.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

P.s. If you are using Wordpress you can grab the StatPress plugin here.

photo credit: Ivan Walsh

I recently created a post about Polite SEO that spoke about blog commenting as a way of building links and how NOT to do it!

The secondary reason was that Polite SEO generates 170 global searches per month according to the Google Keyword Tool.

As it never hurts to go after the low hanging fruit I figured I would target polite SEO and see what happens.

What I discovered when I was checking on my progress is quite interesting and something I want to share with you.

If you have a website that does not stock Halloween products you can sign-up for an affiliate account with Affiliate Bot and look for merchants that do. Once you sign-up for an account you will be able to find merchants to promote that are related to your niche. Once accepted as an affiliate by a merchant, you can start to promote their products by adding affiliate banners to your website or by creating promotional pieces such as content driven pages themed around Halloween and the affiliate products you are recommending.

Once you have created a content page, the search engine optimisation process is essentially the same as what you would do for any page on your website that you would like to do well in the search engine result pages, the only exception is that you will want to target Halloween themed keywords. If SEO is new to you then I recommend you read our previous post Understanding SEO that will work you through the main elements of search engine optimisation.

To find keywords to target for your promotions you can use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. If you are looking to take your keyword research to the next level then I recommend you start using Keyword Elite 2.0 (not free but worth every penny).

Maybe you do not have Halloween or seasonal themed products and you do not want to promote affiliate products, what can you do then?

You can give away seasonal discounts. Who doesn’t like 10 per cent off or a BOGOF (by one get one free)! Don’t be worried about a promotion running at a loss, a good seasonal promotion can drive your sales up through the rise of seasonal search traffic that can give your profits a nice boost.

To your Halloween success,

Karl Foxley

P.s. Now may be the time to start thinking about the promotions you can run for Christmas and the search engine optimisation you’ll need to do to get your pages ranked highly enough to be profitable.

Additional reading: 5 Search Marketing Tips for the Holidays.

If you are unfamiliar with Sidewiki here is what Google say it is:

Google Sidewiki is a browser sidebar that lets you contribute and read information alongside any web page.

So the Sidewiki is a type of commenting system. Well, it’s a bit more than that, it is a way for experts to share their knowledge and skills across the web. People can leave comments to be displayed in the Sidewiki for a particular website / web-page for others to see and add further information to; making this a community tool.

I’ve got ahead of myself, let me quickly walk you through the installation process.

To be able to use Sidewiki you will need a compatible browser and and have the Google Toolbar installed.

Here is the link to Firefox, free to download and has many features you won’t find in other browsers, and here is the link to the Google Toolbar with Sidewiki.

Download Google's Toobar with Sidewiki

After you have successfully installed the toolbar you’ll need to restart your browser. If you’ve been successful you should see the following screen.

You've installed the Google Toolbar with Sidewiki

So why are people excited about the new Sidewiki feature? Well, below you will see a screen-shot taken from our homepage with the Sidewiki open.

The images below shows you what you are greeted with if you have Sidewiki open when you visit Foxley Marketing Solutions.

The next image is a close up of the Sidewiki message I wrote as a greeting to our homepage visitors.

As you can see I have created a custom message that quickly welcomes our visitors, tells them about the site and our search engine optimisation service, and finally, how to grab our RSS feed.

This is an exciting development because, as the site owner (you’ll need to verify your ownership of a website inside Google’s Webmaster Tools), my message stays at the top of the Sidewiki, as mentioned in Google’s documentation.

Returning to the fact that the Sidewiki is a community tool you may be wondering how Google will stop spammers and your competition from adding negative statements in the Sidewiki for your website.

Although I don’t have the answer to this what I do know is that Google say that they will be using multiple signals to score the relevancy and quality of the post plus using user-feedback as a quality score.

“Sidewiki uses a quality algorithm and user ratings to determine the order of the entries that appear in the sidebar for a given page. The entries that are scored as being the most helpful and pertinent are more likely to display.”

Will this stop abuse? I hope so but we will have to wait and see how this works out.

Another great feature of the Sidewiki is, if you leave a quality comment that provides value to the site owner and the community of readers then you increase the chances of your message being shared; that’s right, you will be able to send your favorite entries by email, post to Twitter and / or Facebook.

You will also be able to embed YouTube videos into your comments.

To read more about the features of the Sidewiki and watch a short video click here.

While you are at it, it’s time to grab your Google Profile like I have here.

To your success,

Karl Foxley