Category: Web Content

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What Should You Watch in Google Analytics

Educate yourself on the value of monitoring your site in Google Analytics.
Educate yourself on the value of monitoring your website in Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is a free tool from Google. Insert a small snippet of code in your website files and statistical tracking starts immediately. Over time you can start to identify important trends that you can use to leverage exposure for your business.

Here Are the Areas I Watch in Google Analytics

1. Audience on Left > Overview
Use this page to identify the overview of what is happening on your website from total visits, unique sessions, to time on page and bounce rate.

2.  Audience on Left > Mobile > Overview
Use this page to monitor the technology people are using to visit your website. Monitor the percentage of mobile devices and desktops.  Make sure you are aware of the technology used when visiting your site so you can make sure you are catering to your reader trends.

3. Behavior on the Left > Site Content > All Pages
Use this page to identify the top visited pages of your website.  On this page I monitor my bounce rate by page of content. Where I have a high bounce rate I may want to review my content to make sure it is targeted and concise. Too high of a bounce rate may indicate that AdWords is not targeted enough for you (if you are using AdWords to drive traffic to your website) or that the reader simply did not quickly find the information that they wanted.

4. Behavior on the Left > In Page Analytics
Use this page to actually see an overlay of your own website pages with click traffic indicators and link popularity over the links and navigation of your pages. You can navigate through your entire website. I use this page to identify if I have hot sections of my website or sections that don’t get much attention.

If you need help understanding what is important on your own website and how you may be able to improve site traffic, make sure to review our services for site evaluation.

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Blog Writer’s Guide to Image Use – Prevent Copyright Infringement

Wow, I love this app!
Update your image use protocol.

As a quality blog writing service provider, my firm has developed some best practices over the years in regards to image use and preventing copyright infringement. I wanted to share a few with you in today’s blog post.

1. Use images in your blog posts. It used to be that just text was fine for a well-written blog post. But, in our very visual world of the web, without an image, your blog post looks dull and may not get the traction it needs to be shared. At McCord Web Services, we use only images that we have taken ourselves or images that we buy for one time use from DepositPhotos.com or iStockPhotos.com.

2. Make sure you and your staff adhere to the principle of leaving the purchased source in the image name. This way if you go to select an image to reuse from your WordPress media gallery if you see iStockPhotos or DepositPhotos in the file name, you know to buy a second license or not use it. Never, ever reuse a one time use photo thinking that just because it is in your WordPress blog media gallery you have full use rights. You do not!

3. Review your image use program with all staff. It does your firm no good if you know the image use rules, but your office staff who may do a blog post at some point in time does not!

4. Get in the habit of taking your own clip art photos. Why buy and image of a smartphone to use for your blog post when you can take a pic of your own and use it royalty free anytime you want? Typically, I will put MWS (McCord Web Services) in front of the file name of any pictures I take so that I know and my staff knows we own these image rights and can use them however and whenever we want for all our clients.

5. If you provide professional services like we do for blog clients, make sure your client knows the rules and you are indemnified from a future lawsuit from a client using one time use images that you may have purchased by putting it in your contract. We do.

If you need blog writing services make sure to check us out first.

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Received the Google Mobile Notice – How Do I Fix It

Image of a responsive website on multiple devices.
Make sure you set the viewport for your site to display it properly on multiple devices.

If you have received the Google notice that your website is not mobile friendly and yet you do not have the budget right now to rebuild your website AND you don’t want to have your traffic lowered because of the issue, what can you do?

There are a few services available that will scan your existing site and allow you to drag and drop files in their editor to make a responsive website. Even web hosts have gotten into the action with website templates that are integrated into their hosting platforms.

Although these simplified templates do not allow for a rich, interactive, and custom site, they are good alternatives that are relatively easy albeit fairly time consuming to work with.

Some sites that you may want to check out if you are a do it yourselfer are:

DudaMobile – has mobile friendly as well as responsive designs

WIX – just be careful of the design as not all are really responsive

Shopify has some nice designs to consider

Webflow is even a consideration.

Of course if you want greater control over your design and content, or simply do not have enough time to do this yourself, we have a very nice turnkey program for responsive websites for you to check out and try out online.

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How Long is Too Long When It Comes to a Web Page?

Put the knife to your content to trim it for mobile devices.
Put the knife to your content to trim it for mobile devices.

If you haven’t updated your website in a while you may have some monster pages that need to be trimmed down to work with mobile viewing patterns and our shorter attention spans.

So how long is too long?

If you have to scroll, scroll, scroll, and them scroll some more to get to the bottom of your page on a desktop screen, just think how much more scrolling you would be doing if you were on a smartphone or tablet. In fact, think about how you yourself use the web on a device, rarely will you scroll to the bottom of the page unless it is something you are really interested in. For that matter really long pages may not even load in a smartphone or may take so long that a reader simply clicks back to leave – I’ve done that and I’m sure you have too.

A good rule of thumb is that if a page is more than 1.5 Word document pages it should be shortened and turned into multiple pages. Typically a single page of a Word document is about 500 words. So get close to 800 to 1,000 and up and you really should be thinking of getting out the chopper.

Are there different topics on the same page?

Another good way to look at your own website page is to see if you are hopping around on topics. On that super long page, do you start talking about ants and then talk about each species of ant and then talk about termites too?

It is by far better to have content on one topic on one page and when you move to a new topic create a new page.

Make sure to test your update pages using a smartphone and a tablet. Doing so will give you a really good idea of when you get fatigued with scrolling and need to take the knife out to start trimming up your content.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that your old website is good enough, the mobile space is and has changed everything when it comes to presenting your message on the web. Find out how we can help you trim, adjust, and revise your content to be more concise or to decide where breaks or content should be scrapped.