A few months back I attended a session at a social media conference about QR codes.  I’m not going to mention the conference or the speaker because actually, the presenter was entirely incorrect on one major point they made.  The presentation was on the value of QR Codes, how to use them, why you’d use them and highlighting some customized ones.  Overall the content was pretty good – BUT – the big flaw in the presentation was that the speaker said that QR code activity is not trackable.  That is entirely not true.  They are trackable, and you don’t need some high-end application to do it.

If you don’t understand QR Codes, here are some basics.  A QR Code is similar to a bar code in that it translates pixels into data.  Basically, a QR Code stores a URL (or web address).  Any smart phone or mobile device can scan these codes (with use of a free mobile app) and is then served up content from a website. They are often used to promote events, products, special discounts, and in the example of print ads, they can give the advertiser a quick and easy way to offer more info beyond the quarter-page ad they may have purchased in a magazine.  The QR Code adds another layer to the advertisement that doesn’t cost tons of money.  There are many many uses for them, but people still question them.

But here’s the thing.  If they don’t cost a ton of money, and you CAN track them, why would you not experiment with them?  You could be missing out on something, an audience perhaps, that is more kinesthetic (hands on learners) and loves a good mystery.  I love to scan QR Codes because you just don’t know what’s at the other end. Sometimes there is a “secret” promotion! Consumers love to feel like they got something special that others did not get…

If you run any sort of web analytics on your website, then you have what you need to track the use of QR Codes.  Am I giving away a big trade secret now?  I don’t think so…  If you are building a QR Code, it is URL based – remember we talked about that.  So – if you want to track your QR codes that are out there in print and on walls, etc… create unique landing pages for them.  Did I blow your mind?  Create a new page that is ONLY sending traffic to your website from scanning of a QR Code.  That way when you look at your content page views in analytics you can see how many times they were scanned.

Take it a step further – test custom codes, placement, promotions, and more by creating unique landing pages for each iteration.  That way you can compare one against the other.  For example you may advertise in Food Network Magazine and Cuisine at Home Magazine (my two favorites) and you may run QR codes in both.  If you use the exact same code in both that perhaps sends your users to your website home page – you can’t really track which is sending you more traffic.  If, however, you create unique landing pages for each ad in the different magazines, you can determine which is the better advertising spend based on response as shown in your analytics.

But… make sure your QR Code landing page is compelling.  If you don’t, chances are your visitors will not scan your QR codes in the future, for fear they will be bored to tears, or they won’t expect to find anything of value at the other end of the code.

They are a relatively low cost way to add a new layer to your marketing.  And at the end of the day, they are completely trackable if they are implemented properly.

Want more info on how to get custom QR Codes and landing pages? You know what to do…

Search Engine Optimization – or SEO – is a sought after service with the rise in social media and the value of marketing online.  Companies will seek to hire someone to “do SEO” on their website to increase visibility in the major search engines.  The realization that you have admitted you need some help with search engine ranking is a great start – however, when I talk to people about what SEO really entails, often times they either don’t understand it, or don’t want to hear it.

The problem with not accepting these two major truths about SEO, is that if you don’t believe them – and then hire someone to “do SEO” for you, you will never be happy and you will feel like you’ve been ripped off.  But the reality is that you have to seriously consider Search Engine Optimization as an investment of time and dollars into the success of your online presence.

The two truths about SEO that people seem to ignore are this:

You don’t just “do SEO” once and then Voila!

Search Engine Optimization is a process.  Let’s suppose a company comes to you and wants you to “do SEO” on their website.  And let’s also suppose that website has about somewhere between 8-10 pages of content.  You could just “do SEO” on that website by improving meta titles, meta descriptions and meta keywords.  You could also create optimized naming conventions for images and downloadable files, as well as alt-tags.  On top of that you could review the site content with a fine-toothed comb and make improvements to the language that are more search-relevent.

So let’s suppose you did these things to your customer’s website and sent them on their way. Technically, yes… that site has been optimized and could potentially improved it’s search rank – but here’s the reality…

Unless that company has such a niche product that no-one else is writing about online, chances are even if they do get rank on the newly optimized website – that rank will probably only last a short time.  As the competition continues to blog and post regular content, it provides tremendous value to their search rank, and with each new piece of content published about your product or service (that was not published by your customer because they maintain an 8-10 page static website only), they stand to lose search rank.

Your static website will not hold it’s position.  You need to be adding content regularly that is relevant to your business, and meets the needs of your customer and potential buyers.  Blogging is an excellent way to do this, and provides you an outlet to open dialogue with customers and prospects – while providing real value beyond a 10 page static website.

The second truth is this…

It’s takes time to gain organic search position…

Assuming you understand the first truth, know this… A solid SEO strategy takes time to implement because it’s about building content on an ongoing basis indefinitely.  You cannot expect that you’ve added 5 new pages of content to your website, and Google will automatically crawl your site and decide to throw you up on page one above all those who are publishing content regularly and are doing it well.

It is a process.  I tell clients to expect NOT to see any results for MONTHS.  This is the reality people, and anyone who tells you differently does not speak honestly with you.  This is not to say you need to keep someone in your employ for months on end and spend tons and tons of money.  You can hire someone to get you rolling, teach you the ropes and make sure you are equipped with the means to continue publishing content on your own.

When I run search rank reports, I only check them every two months.  Search rank fluctuates daily. I focus on long-term growth, not daily position – and you should too.

Monitoring keywords, top content, and referring sites can give you additional knowledge as to which keywords are performing best, and which might need some love in the way of additional content.

So.. if you are seeking an SEO professional – don’t focus on big magical promises.  Work with someone who will really provide long-term strategy for content development.  Hire someone who will not talk in buzz words but will take the time to really help you understand the types of content you should develop and the best way to go about it.

You’ll be much happier in the long-run, if you can be patient and trust the process.

This morning on Mashable I picked up a quick snippet that Yahoo! has rolled out a new search insights tool called Yahoo Clues.  This tool was created to allow users to find out how people are using Yahoo and what they are searching for.  You can even compare search terms.  Given the timeliness and surprise of the latest Dancing With the Stars elimination of Brandy, I decided to take a peek at the level of conversation that took place in Yahoo! over the previous 7 day period.  What this shows is actually pretty interesting!

The above graphic shows the volume of searches in Yahoo! for the term “bristol palin dwts” versus “brandy dwts.”  For those of you who have watched, Brandy is clearly the more polished performer, although Bristol is probably the most improved.    Brandy has always scored higher than Bristol by the judges standards, but as the show goes, the public gets to vote on who they want to stay.   Bristol must have had a massive amount of votes compared to Brandy to make up for her lack of judges scores to propel her into the finals.

Looking at the above graphic, it’s evident (at least on Yahoo!) that there is much more conversation taking place about Bristol than Brandy – and one can perhaps glean from these insights that Bristol is, in fact, the more popular choice.   If you look at the dates, they both danced for their spot in the finals on Monday, November 15th.  The volume of searches for Bristol were nearly 40% higher on Yahoo! than they were for Brandy.

The Yahoo! Clues tool is in it’s infancy, but it does look to have some interesting information available about demographics and such of it’s users.  The image below gives you a snap shot of how Yahoo! currently displays the demographic info:

Of course, there are much more practical uses of this tool from a business and marketing analytics perspective.  This tool is so new, I’ll be interested to see how it evolves and if it causes an increase in Yahoo! search usage or popularity.  Search engines need to continually evolve with enhanced services to complete with Google.  Where do you see this going?

A simple concepts, and a bit of review…  Chances are, you’ve placed some content on your web site or blog and made it available for your users to download.  If that is the case, I’m guessing you believe your content to be useful to your audience (and it probably is).

Wouldn’t it be helpful to know exactly how many times your content is, in fact, downloaded?    Here is the simple code to install on your site (assuming you are using Google Analytics) to track the each download event of each file:

onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/downloads/_custom‘); ”

This code is placed inside the href tag and after the link file name.   The portion noted in red above ‘custom’ is your way of differentiating between types of content you may offer up on your site for more granular tracking.  (eg. white_papers, case_studies, etc.)

So a completed link might look like this:

<a href=”http://www.yourwebsite.com” onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/downloads/white_paper’); “>

Things to think about if your download counts are low:

• Is the document download link strategically placed on the page or hidden within the content?
• Is the document link labeled appropriately (might consider a call-out)
• Is the actual landing page where the download is offered well structured and search optimized?
• Is the landing page buried several clicks deep on your site?

These are some areas for trial and error to improve visibility of your downloadable content.  Try to modify one of all of the above to improve exposure to your content.

Our web content should serve a purpose for our audience – that being said, we need to know how it’s performing.

Google Analytics recently rolled out the new “Intelligence” section of Analytics – adding more features to how we track and manage web conversions.  I thought I’d take a few minutes to show you the basics on how to set them up and why you might want to use them.

The more we know about our web site’s performance, the better we can plan for upcoming drops in traffic (based on past trends), or prepare for increased traffic with successful marketing campaigns.

Annotations can be an effective tool in placing reminders right into your analytical data that you can refer back to when pulling historical data.  A couple of examples of where you might do this:

• Large/Sudden drop in traffic due to perhaps a power outage – note the power outage so a year from now when you look at historical date you remember that.
• A jump in traffic could be due to an email campaign, press release, blog post, new product intro – note the specific event in your Google analytics account.
• When you are working with tools like Google AdWords you often make budget changes, create new Ad Groups, pause Ad Groups.  Creating an annotation is a good idea to track these events.
• Perhaps you launch a full site redesign that includes all new content that will need to be re-indexed by the search engines.  Create an annotation.

There are many reasons to create annotations in Google Analytics as they are quick ‘at-a-glance’ checkpoint when looking at your data.  Below is a quick snap-shot of annotations and how to create them.

The above image shows the same data point and how to view/create annotations.  Here’s the breakdown:

Image A shows the data point (date) where there was a jump in traffic.  Notice in the image the little thought bubble at the bottom. This is the indicator that lets you know there is an Annotation associated with that date.

Image B shows what you will see if you mouse-over the annotation bubble.  It shows you the date, how many site visits on that date, and how many annotations have been created for that date.  (If you have clicked on that, you’ll see your annotations just below this graph).

Image C is what you see when you click on the annotation bubble – this is where you get the option to “Create New Annotation.”

Once you’ve clicked on “Create New Annotation” you have the option to insert text associated with the event you want to track for that date.  (See image below)  It’s pretty straight forward – just put in a very brief description of the event you are tracking.  “BLOG POST:  Creating Google Annotations” would be the description I would create if I created one for this post.   Save it, and your done!

Creating Annotations in Google Analytics

I am finding Google Analytics Annotations to be a good tool to use when doing specific tasks related to Social Media tasks.  I know we use monitoring and tracking tools for Social Media, and Google Analytics was not built specifically for that, but often times customers want that quick ‘at-a-glance” view of how things are going, how a Facebook change may have been successful or generated new fans, if a blog post drove traffic to your site, etc.

I hope this was helpful.

What is Bounce Rate: It is the percentage of users who are exiting your site upon landing on a single page and not continuing to any other pages during that site visit. If a user hits your home page and leaves without digging into your site content that is considered a “bounce”. This rule applies to any page on your site a user lands on, whether it’s bookmarked or found through search.

Internet marketers use bounce rate to determine whether certain pages of your site are communicating properly. A higher bounce rate means there is much work to be done in improving the content on your site, whether it be an informational site or an eCommerce site. There are factors to look at that on a page by page basis that will affect your bounce rate, and in some situations a higher bounce rate might actually be okay. A page that is bookmarked on a news site that is updated daily with stories and such may have a higher bounce rate. eCommerce sites should not apply the same line of thinking.

Static Cling for eCommerce:

We, as internet marketers, need to be passionate about bounce rate. You want a lower bounce rate on eCommerce sites – mainly because the end-goal would be getting your users to click that magic “add to cart” button and completing the sale. If this is not ocurring on your product pages and your bounce rate is high you may want to assess the following information:

Does the user know WHAT you are selling? It is clear they have landed on a product page and can EASILY purchase? If you are selling, be sure that you product pages communicate that effectively.

Does your product’s description provide enough information to assist the user in making the decision to purchase. If you are selling an item that has many applications or uses, this should be spelled out in your description. For example – if you are selling glue, and this glue can be used on wood, plastic, metal, etc – your product description should reflect that and not leave any unanswered questions the shopper may have.

Can the user/shopper easily figure out HOW to buy this product? Is there a clear “add to cart” or “buy now” button or link? In most cases, this should be found above-the-fold (meaning the user does not need to scroll to find it). This is not always possible, and may not prevent the sale, but it’s a good general rule of thumb.

Is your price point competitive? People shop around – and the internet is the easiest way to price compare products before making a purchase. If a user lands on your page and finds your product to be overpriced – the user/shopper will “bounce”.

If you are running AdWords, is your campaign set up properly and effectively optimized? Be sure if you are paying for site traffic that they are not bouncing quickly. If you are advertising on specific keywords, be sure the user who has searched on that keyword is finding EXACTLY what they are looking for when they land on your site. Use negative keywords to increase the value of your click-through-rate (CTR). If you sell glue that only works on wood and not on plastic – remove the search traffic for “plastic glue” by adding negative keywords. Also be sure your landing pages for your ads allow your user to find what they have searched for immediately. Preferrably the user will land on the product page where they can immediately make a purchase.

At home, we use Bounce to get rid of static and stickiness on our clothing. On the internet, we do not want bounce, we want our search traffic to stick, and we want our users to find what they are looking for.

If your bounce rates are higher – throw away that fabric softener or staticguard and start digging into why your traffic is not sticking on your site. Be sure if it is an eCommerce site you are checking your bounce rate at the product level and start working on improving the shopping experience for your user, by making it easy to make a decision to purchase, and then even easier to actually make that purchase on the spot.

These are just a few of my thoughts. I’m sure you have your own sticky points to ponder about bounce rate, and I’d love to hear them!