I received an email from a lady named Angelica, who plans to publish an instructional blog post about Google Analytics (GA), but she is a bit hesitant because she feels it won’t be comprehensive enough.

She admits she is afraid of coming across dumb because her article is not going to be as thorough as other bloggers who’ve written about it.

My first question to her was, “Who is this article for?”

She told me it was for new Webmasters.

Bingo!

This is a mistake many people make.  They worry about coming across as inferior to people they aren’t even writing for.  If your site is for beginning Webmasters, write for them.

Don’t concern yourself with the perceptions of people you aren’t even targeting.  As I said in this article, there will always be people who know less than you, and need your advice.  This is your target audience, and should be your main focus.

Let’s say the Site Overlay is Angelica’s favorite Google Analytics report. She could focus her blog post on that portion of GA by explaining how it works and how she uses it.   She could even preface that she is still learning a lot about GA, but wants to share one of her favorite features.

Let’s remember.  Her audience consists of new Webmasters, so chances are, many of them may not know a lot about GA yet.  That’s why it’s so important to keep in mind WHO you are writing for!

Instead of publishing a comprehensive article about the entire Google Analytics program, she can focus on the area she is most knowledgeable about.  Then at the end of the article she can invite her readers to share their favorite reports and features.

This accomplishes a few things…

1)  Angelica can appear as the “expert” on the part of Google Analytics that she is comfortable with

2) Since she knows who her audience is (important!), she is bound to teach several people something new

3) Inviting her readers to share their favorite GA report can spark a discussion and educate other readers

Now, sometimes it’s necessary to do a little research before publishing an article.  Of course, it wouldn’t hurt Angelica to learn a little more about GA to give the blog post more meat.

However, she shouldn’t feel that she has to know EVERYTHING about a topic in order to write a solid, polished article.  And she certainly shouldn’t compare her article to others who may target a different audience.

If I had waited until I knew everything about how to create a website, I would have never published 2CreateAWebsite.com.

I still don’t know everything (and probably never will), but I know enough to publish content that is relevant and appeals to my audience.

As I always say, focus on what you know, and let the content flow.  There will always be people who know less than you and desire to learn what you already know.

Someone asked me about my favorite Web tools, and I thought it would make a good topic for my blog.

So without further ado…

SiteMeter

I’m sure this surprises a lot of you.  Why in the world would I use the archaic SiteMeter when Google Analytics is arguably the best, comprehensive website stat packages around?

I use Google Analytics too, but I like SiteMeter for two reasons:

1) I’ve been using it since 2 Create a Website launched in 2002 (before Analytics existed), so it’s nice to have a complete history of my site’s traffic.

2) SiteMeter’s daily reports can be accessed much quicker than G.A.  Sometimes I just want to get a quick glance at today’s traffic without having to change the reporting dates on the calendar, etc.

Even though the SiteMeter reports are very basic, they report on many of the popular stats webmasters like to keep track of.  Plus, you can access them all with one click from the dashboard.

SiteMeter is best for quick, daily reports.

Search It!

This is one of SiteSell’s many freebies they provide to help PREsell their popular website builder, Site Build It! (SBI!).  Nevertheless, you don’t have to buy SBI! to take advantage of this all-in-one information tool.

If you haven’t tried Search It! yet, I’ll warn you… it’s kind of addictive.  (The link to the actual tool is at the very bottom of the page.)

This one tool helps you brainstorm keywords, find your competition, shows your site’s popularity, helps you find forums in your niche, reports your backlinks, and even shows you where to find affiliate programs and other monetization options for your niche.

ColorZilla

Ever noticed a color on the Web and wanted to know the hex color so you could use it on your site?

With this handy Firefox add-on, you can use the eyedropper tool to hover over any color in your browser and it will display the hex color code.

I must say, this tool has given my very own Flash hex color tools a run for their money.

IETab & BrowserShots.org

Personally, I wish there was a mandate that required everyone to switch to Firefox.  However, since we all know that will never happen, Webmasters have to continue to design for the dreaded Internet Explorer too.

So that’s why I love Firefox’s add-on called IETab.  It lets you right-click your mouse to quickly view your site in IE.

Or if you don’t want to install the add-on, you can use Browsershots.org and view your site in almost every browser (and version) available. (Thanks, Paul of TechnicallyEasy.net.)

Tutorials Garden

Any time I want to learn how to do something in PhotoShop, I head over to Tutorials Garden.  There are hundreds of pages of tutorials here and you can learn how to do almost anything.  It’s very similar to Tutorialized.com.

Tutorials Garden doesn’t just cater to PhotoShop users.  There are tutorials for Fireworks, CSS, Gimp, PHP and more.

I used their tutorial to create the graphic below for one of my blog posts a few months back…

SEOmoz

This is a very good, comprehensive site on SEO (search engine optimization).

Not only is there great advice on SEO in general, but SEOmoz provides a plethora of tools available to check your keyword rankings, site crawlability and there are a ton of different link reports.

If you are a stat junky, you may want to bookmark this site.

What are Some of Your Favorites?

I’d love to hear about some of the web tools or plug-ins that have made your life easier.  Please feel free to share!

I’ve always been a stat junky.

I love checking my RSS feed subscriber numbers, my AWeber subscriber stats, Google Analytics account, etc. multiple times per day.

I’ll admit, I might need therapy.

However, if you really take some time analyze your traffic stats and even stats from other sites (I’ll explain that part in a bit), it can really help you improve your site and increase your traffic.

Here are some ideas…

Bounce Rates from Referring Sites

If you don’t have a Google Analytics account by now, I’d sure like to know why.

It’s the most comprehensive stat package you can get for free, and the information it provides is incredibly useful.

One report I like to keep an eye on is the Bounce Rate for Referring Sites.

By Google’s definition, a Bounce Rate is the percentage of people who left your site after viewing a single page (i.e. the page they entered on.)

So this is a percentage you want to keep low. If your Bounce Rate is 90% that means 90% of the people who entered your site, left after only viewing the page they entered on. You can view your Bounce Rate for your entire site or break it down by page.

Google also lets you take it a step further by viewing your Bounce Rate based on referring sites. For example, I discovered that traffic from EzineArticles.com returns the lowest bounce rate.

I guess this shouldn’t come as a huge shock. After all, 2CreateAWebSite.com targets Webmasters and so does EzineArticles.com.

So it definitely makes sense why visitors coming from there would be more inclined to stay on my site longer. Nevertheless, it’s still useful info.

Now, I’ll admit. Article marketing is nowhere as useful as it once was. A couple of years ago it was the thing to do because it helped you gain backlinks. But you may have heard Google and other engines are devaluing such links.

So while I don’t expect any backlink miracles from using EzineArticles.com, I do appreciate the fact that people who find my sites from this source tend to stick around longer than some of my other referring sites.

Not to mention, the traffic I receive from older articles is still quite impressive.

I haven’t been writing as much for EzineArticles.com as of late, but after discovering this little traffic fact, I may have to start sending more content their way very soon.

Have you checked your Bounce Rate from referring sites? Google makes it easy because you can sort from lowest to highest and vice versa.

What sites send you the stickiest traffic? How can you increase your exposure there to boost your traffic?

Most Popular Pages

Check your stats and see what pages or blog posts are visited the most. How can you leverage that and generate more traffic to other parts of your site that may be less trafficked?

Say you have a site on skin care, and your most heavily trafficked page is one that shows people how to control acne. In that article, you discuss the benefits of using a particular mask.

A few months later you decide to create a new page all about different kinds of masks. Since this page is brand new, it won’t get much search engine traffic for a while. So why not link that page from the popular acne article to help funnel traffic to this new page?

As your site matures, it can be tempting to just add new content to your sitemap, left navigation and be done with it. But it’s important to continually look for new ways to interlink your content. I set aside time to do this once a month.

The “Time on Page” Stat

This is another statistic you can get from Google Analytics (Under the “Content” section). Sort your reports by the “Time on Page” stat and see if you notice any patterns.

If your longer pages tend to have lower times then that could indicate you need to break up your content better. Perhaps people are getting lost and drowning in a sea of text.

One thing I have to do on 2CreateAWebSite.com is condense a lot of my longer articles. I’ve been doing that for some pages and tracking the results by monitoring their individual “Time on Page” stats.

I’ve noticed many of these pages I’ve updated are now showing that people are staying on them a lot longer and my overall site’s Bounce Rate is improving.

Too much content with not enough breaks can make reading tedious and overwhelming. Make frequent use of sub-titles, break up your paragraphs often, use images and start incorporating visuals such as charts, video, etc.

You’ll be amazed at the results.

Search Engine Keyword Traffic

I touched on this in my post 5 Easy Traffic Building Tips, but it’s worth mentioning again.

Pay close attention to the keywords people are finding you for. Not so much for the keywords that bring you the most traffic, but the keywords that bring you the least amount of traffic.

That’s right, the least.

Have you ever checked your stats and noticed certain articles on your site get found for keywords you weren’t necessarily targeting? Maybe you rank #12 for “popular puppy toys” in an article you wrote about house training a dog.

Just think… if you can rank #12 with a keyword phrase you weren’t trying to target, imagine if you wrote an entire article that focused on popular puppy toys. Perhaps you can grab one of the top spots for this phrase and rake in even more traffic!

If you can do this for 15, 30, or even 50+ keyword phrases, imagine how this could impact your traffic over time.

Sure, you may not be able to gain a top rank like this for every keyword phrase, but I’m sure it will make a difference. Not to mention, adding more useful content to your site is always a good thing, right?

Digg and Other Social Bookmarking Sites

I like to spend time on Digg.com looking at the most popular articles related to my niche. Sometimes you can get ideas for what to write about and see what’s hot.

All you do is search their site for whatever keyword you’re interested in and Digg will return the articles with the most “Diggs”. Or you can search by category and get the same kind of results.

Not only can you get ideas for content, but you can also learn a lot about writing. Don’t just look at the content of the article, but look at the headline itself.

Is it catchy? Funny? Does it create controversy? What tips can you take from the author and apply it to your writing style?

Now, let’s face it. A lot of the articles become popular in Digg because the authors themselves are popular and have a large traffic base.

So I’m not implying you can just write a similar article and easily get as much traffic. But it’s still a good tool to use to get ideas.

TrafficJam.com

I’ve been lucky enough to appear on this homepage a few times and got a decent amount of traffic from it. (Don’t let the site’s PR3 scare ya away.)

In case you don’t know, TrafficJam.com provides a ranking of blog articles based on traffic they’ve received throughout the BlogRush network.

I’ve used this site from time to time to get ideas for what’s hot in my niche and tips for writing good headlines.

You can utilize the above tips with any social networking/bookmarking site. Pay close attention to the articles getting all the publicity and see how you can apply these principles to your own content.

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So there you have it. Hopefully you can see how useful statistics can be. Rather than just checking the most common stats (total page views, top referring sites, etc.), dig deep and see how can use these numbers to improve your traffic and overall visitor experience.

By all means, sign up with Google Analytics and take advantage of this thorough stat package that won’t cost you a thing… Well except the time you’ll spend gawking at the reports and absorbing all the numerous statistics they report to you.

Some of you spend months searching high and low for sites and techniques to help boost your traffic. Yet in many cases, the most effective tips are often closer than you think.

Getting ranked #1 in Google for those heavily searched, relevant keywords is the dream of every Webmaster.

And if you’ve been around for a while, you know that task is not as easy as it once was.

Years ago you could stuff keywords, hide content in your background and perform all kinds of tricks to get you ranked at or near the top.

Nowadays you have to work much harder to get that Google love.

And who could blame Google for making it more difficult to rank high? They are successful because they deliver useful, relevant results.

So why wouldn’t they protect their brand from tricksters and spammers out to make a quick buck?

While you probably know about the basic ways of getting a good ranking in Google (high-quality inbound links, relevant content, etc.) many people believe Google is using other tools to see how you measure up and help determine your rank.

And if you ask me, it makes perfect sense.

Your Feed Activity

In case you didn’t know, Google owns FeedBurner (an RSS feed distribution & reporting service.)

So if you have a blog that uses Feedburner to promote, track and manage your feed, wouldn’t it make sense that Google monitors those subscription numbers and feed activity?

This is why I think it’s so important that your blog lives on the same domain as your site. Make it easy for Google to make the connection.

Google is a Registrar

In 2005, Google outwardly admitted they use their Registrar status to help improve the quality of their search results.

So if two of your sites got banned from spamming and they were both registered under the same name, what do you think will happen when you try to promote a 3rd site in Google that has the same registration data?

On the flip side, say someone has 3 heavily trafficked sites that rank well in Google. Wouldn’t it make sense that additional sites registered by that same person could have an added advantage in the long-run since the other 3 sites have some Google love?

Hmmmm……

Google Owns YouTube

Say you’ve got a YouTube channel with 794 subscribers, 300,000 video views and your channel homepage links to your main site. A pretty active channel, I’d say.

Why wouldn’t Google take this into consideration in determining your site’s credibility?

I’ve been using YouTube since August 2007 and while I have no proof using it has affected my rankings, it only makes sense that having a heavily trafficked YouTube channel linked to my website helps show Google that I am a credible source in my niche.

Google Analytics

What better way to prove to Google you are worthy by letting them see your traffic data. If you have a Google Analytics account then Google now has access to your visitor information.

Now, if you’re site is new and your traffic is low don’t panic and feel you should remove the code until you get more traffic. I don’t think using it will hurt you.

But when your site does start to generate traffic from other sources, wouldn’t you want Google to see that?

Now, we all know you don’t need Google Analytics installed on your site for Google to see who’s linking to you, but what if 75% of your traffic is bookmark traffic?

That kind of traffic data is not taken into consideration with backlinks and PageRank. Wouldn’t you want Google to know that these loyal people are visiting your site regularly?

There’s No Concrete Proof

While there is no way to know how Google uses the above information, let’s be realistic here…

If there are two sites with relatively the same content but one site has an RSS feed tracked by FeedBurner with 2,000 subscribers, a YouTube channel with 30 videos and 130,000 views, and 10,000 visits per day tracked by Google Analytics, while the other site has no blog, no videos and fewer visitors…

Which one do you think Google will respect more?

Granted, the above items may not have a very large influence on a site’s rank (yet), but you better believe they play a role…. especially when it comes down to determining the value of competing sites with similar content.

Why wouldn’t Google put all these pieces together?

These days you’ve got to work harder than ever to prove your worth to Google, so why not make use of the tools they own and monitor?

1. Visit/Hit Counters

Nothing says “amateur website” like a good ole’ fashioned hit counter.

Let me be blunt…

No one really cares if you’ve had 15,034 visitors since May or 232 hits today. They care about your content, site usability and what your site can do for them.

I think a lot of people add counters because they feel once the number increases, it will make their site look popular. But if you have a low-trafficked site and someone happens to notice your hit counter has only gone up a few digits in a week, it’s going to make your site look small-ish.

If you want to keep track of your stats, that’s fine. Use a hidden counter like Google Analytics. You can check your stats at any time while keeping your info hidden from the public.

But stay away from visible stat counters. Yuck!

2. Animation Overload

Animation can be effective in small doses, but you don’t want your site to look as if an Adobe Flash program threw up on your homepage.

I remember designing my first site. I was so excited that I added any kind of graphic that either flashed, bounced or scrolled. I’m surprised I didn’t get a headache from looking at it.

If the goal of your site is to make money, realize content sells, not graphics. And you don’t want anything to distract from your message. Graphics are fun and can enhance a site, but too much can turn people away.

3. Fake Testimonials

Who the hell is “John P. from Colorado”? I’m sure there probably is such a person, but chances are he never emailed you about your site.

If you want to gain credibility from your testimonials, either get permission to add the person’s e-mail address or add a website link after the person’s name. (Be sure to get their permission!)

Don’t make up people and add a city after their name. It’s the oldest testimonial trick in the book and it doesn’t fool anyone. If anything, it makes you look less trustworthy and this is amateur work at its best.

4. Too Many Ads

Web surfers are getting savvier. They recognize Google ads, ignore banner ads more and more, and can tell when someone is more interested in getting paid than offering good information.

Work on building your credibility with good content first, then start serving up ads. And even then, don’t overdo it. If you spend time making your site useful, you’ll be surprised at how much you can make from a minimal amount of ads.

5. Inconsistent Layout

Have you ever gone to a site, clicked around and wondered if you are on the same site?

Well, if I just described your site, you’ve made a common mistake that screams “amateur.” A website should have a cohesive look and all pages should share the same layout.

Use the same fonts on every page, keep link colors the same and be sure your navigation remains consistent. And if you need help choosing a color scheme, check out my hex color scheme generator.