Firstly if you are not using Google Webmaster Tools to help you manage and maintain your site then you need to get it set up straight away. When I sat down to write this I thought about the title and the only thing I could come up with was ‘url canonicalization’, but this is just jargon and means nothing to the layman.

The Problem

In short depending on how your server and site are set up you may find that you have multiple versions of your site indexed by the search engines the www version and the non www version. If you can put http://yoursite.com into a browser and http://www.yoursite.com into a browser then you have a problem. For the more geeky readers you you can read Matt Cutts explanation but basically the search engines will see duplicate content and this will affect your rankings and any work you do to try and get your site to rank higher will be diluted and can split the link juice between pages. Damn there goes some more jargon but rather than reinvent the wheel here here is a brilliant explanation of link juice.

The Solution

Log into Google Webmaster Tools click on Site configuration and then click on Settings and where it says Preferred domains set to either display urls as www.yoursite.com or just yoursite.com. I always go with www but the important thing is not which one you choose but that you choose one. As you can see a very simple step but the benefits can be very far reaching although it will take time for these chamges to perculate.

Lets not forget although we have done it in Google Webmaster Tools there are other search engines out there, and therefore you should also set up a redirect. You can do this by putting the following 301 redirects into your .htaccess file (replacing landingnet.co.uk with your own site name).

www version

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.landingnet\.co.uk$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.landingnet.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]

non www version

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^landingnet\.co.uk$
RewriteRule (.*) http://landingnet.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]

If you feel confident enough to do this yourself then ‘bobs yer uncle’ and the net result is to redirect your whole site to your preferred domain (type http://landingnet.co.uk into a browser you will see it redirects to the www version).

If you would like help with any of the above then you can call us on 0843 289 0120 or email us

It never ceases to amaze me how many people don’t track the visitors to their site or if they do have access to their website analytics they don’t take advantage of them and just look at the top level number of visitors and fail to analyse the data to help improve their website conversions and boost profits.

A website should be seen as a ‘living thing’ which through a process of fine tuning constantly evolves. It is very easy to become focussed on the bottom lineand see an increase in the number of visitors as a success. Obviously an increase in traffic is a good starting point but it is the constant evaluation of your traffic and fine tuning of your website that will bring long term commercial profitability.

There are many different tools for measuring and analyzing website traffic and although we are familiar with most of them here at Landingnet the default that we recommend to all new clients is Google Analytics. This is not meant to be an analytics tutorial but just an overview of the data available within Google Analytics and the way it can be used to help improve your website and your business. If you would like us to setup you website analytics then please get in touch.

There are 4 main sections within the analytics interface which I shall discuss in a bit more detail:

• Visitors
• Traffic Sources
• Content
• Goals

Visitors

This section allows you to analyze your visitors and see where in the world they are, the type of equipment they used to view your website, whether they are a new or return visitor and the ‘bounce rate’ which measures the percentage of people that enter the site and leave without viewing other pages.

It is exceptionaly important to keep an eye on what technology your viewers use to access your website. the type of browser and screen resolutions of your visitors should always be taken into account and your website should be tweaked as trends change to give people the optimum web experience for their setup. It is not so long ago that the majority of visitors were using screen resolutions as low as 800 X 600. But a quick look at our stats show that this now accounts for less than 0.5% of our visitors with more than 20% of all visitors viewing our site at a resolution of 1280 X 800 thus necessitating new layouts every so often to take advantage of the extra space available.

A few years ago internet explorer accounted for about 90% of all users this has changed enormously in recent years with firefox and chrome both grabbing more market share at the expense of i.e.

This information is important as different browsers handle html differently. Any web design company ‘worth its salt’ should design for cross browser compatibility but new browsers are constantly entering the market and of course lets not forget the advent of smartphones. So if, for instance, your site was designed a few years ago it may not look good in Chrome or may not even work properly or in the case of one site I was asked to review recently, may not display at all!

I will cover the other main areas within Google analytics in part 2 but in the meantime if you aren’t using any form of visitor tracking on your site or you need help to get the most out of your analytics then feel free to contact us and we can get you up and running.

If you have a blog on your site then you are well aware of the importance of keeping it regularly updated with fresh new content, but the big question (especially for smaller businesses that don’t have the resources available) is how can you afford to dedicate the time required to do this?

Simple answer – Allow authors to write a guest post for you.

Known as “Guest Blogging” this can be a win-win situation for both you (the owner of the blog) and the guest author. You’ll get a piece of free and exclusive content for your site, and the author gets their name out into the blogsphere with a link back to their site. Don’t deny the authors a link back to their site – you’ll be taking away their incentive to write for you if you do.

How to find guest bloggers for your site

http://myblogguest.com/ – This service allows both blog owners and authors alike to cut through the chaff of the internet by allowing both to meet through a dedicated service for guest blogging opportunities.

Twitter.com – Hopefully you’ll have been doing some Social Marketing and now have a healthy supply of followers, so announce the fact that you’re giving the opportunity for people to publish guest posts on your site and for them to get in touch.

Write a “Become a guest author” page on your site with a list of subjects you’ll be interested in receiving submissions for, and what the author will get in return. You don’t necessarily need a large subscriber base to your blog for this to be useful, those looking for guest blogging opportunities could find the page in Google.

Ask us! We have contacts to a number of copywriters with their own blogs so they may be interested in appearing as guest author on your site. Let us know and we’ll put it forward to them.

Things to keep in mind

Don’t always assume that you’re going to get exclusive content on your site because the guest author may have approached a number of other blog owners as well as yourself. Due to this, the content that you get may be duplicate content to that posted somewhere else – always check before you publish.

http://www.copyscape.com/ – use this free tool check any content you get to make sure that it hasn’t been posted anywhere else, and for a more in depth check to the originality there is also a premium version available. Probably the best way to explain their service is by showing there video (important bit for receiving content is from 1:27)…

Happy blogging!