Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [20]
Figure 2-10: Google search snippet: San Diego Zoo
This snippet is a critical part of getting people to click through to your website, because it must have three criteria for success:
Be clear
Be concise
Be compelling
There should be no question as to what the searcher will find on the other side of the link.
HTML or Code
The HTML, or code, of the website contains the instructions to display the content through the browser. The code consists of directions, written mostly in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), that specify the alignment of the content, the text size, the color, and the font. Image placement, background color, and all of the elements on the page are defined and arranged through the HTML.
The code also contains elements for server data, scripts for tracking visitors, scripts for animated functions, and other instructive data. The search engines “read” this code to find the content and also “read” the HTML to find the layout instructions for the text. In a sense, the search engines read the HTML to find out what content is in the headline, subheading, image captions, and more.
The search engines do not see the site the same way as you do through the browser. The best way to see what the search engines “see” is to right-click with your mouse on a web page and select View Source. That is the code, the content, and the set of instructions for the layout of the content that the search engines copy.
Analytics
There is a difference between website statistics and analytics. Website statistics are provided usually by an automated program that displays charts, graphs, and basic visitor information. Statistics are static information. Analytics is the practice of taking website-produced data and using it to improve your website.
Just about every activity on a website can be tracked—how visitors arrive at your website, what page they first see, the link they choose to move to the next page, how long they stay on that page, and how they move through the rest of the website. Analysts love to track visitor behavior from the entry to conversion, because that provides a spectacular amount of data and information that can be used to advance the website and the processes required of the visitor.
If you are looking at website data and just reporting the numbers that are published each month, you are simply reporting website statistics. Analytics takes a complete view of the website and is an active searching and questioning of the behavior and activity that takes place on the website. In other words, analytics is questioning and answering; statistics are simply reporting.
Part V will cover analytics much more and will focus on specific tactics you can implement that will improve your overall marketing, SEO campaigns, usability, copywriting, content development, and advertising campaigns.
Conversion
The word conversion has been used at a few points already in this text, and it is a critical word, because it is the purpose of your website. Your primary goal for the visitor is the conversion.
The conversion can be whatever you define—a purchase, registration, phone call, download, lead form, ad click, donation, newsletter subscription, or page view. It is all based on the type of website you have, the business purpose, and how you make money. The conversion is the point that the visitor takes an action that leads to your business profitability.
It isn’t bad to have more than one conversion goal; in fact, it is encouraged. It is best to have a primary conversion goal and then secondary conversion goals. For example, on an ecommerce site, if the visitor does not purchase, then the secondary goal