Hey folks. As your Arlington based Website Design / Marketing company, we want to make sure and keep you in the know with tips and things to watch out for so you can start improving your company presence online and your marketing efforts overall.

Today we will discuss tracking because if you can’t measure it, you can’t use it.  This is a simple concept that is often skipped over when going through the day to day activities of running a business and that is tracking information. I’m not talking about tracking sales and profits and all that. I am talking about tracking the events that cause your sales and revenue to go up. Now regardless of whether or not you have a service or product you are selling, you need to be sure to track the events that cause your sales so you can then capitalize on them and generate even more business.

So how do I track events?

There are several ways of tracking events online including website analytics and the built in analytics programs many email blasters and online advertising systems have built in. These numbers and figures are often over-looked but oh so important as they tell you what happened when and where specifically for those marketing efforts.  This info is crucial for determining whether or not that marketing effort (SEO, advertising online, directory listing, mass-emailer, etc.) is worth continuing.  Once you know what is effective, you can then try to duplicate that effectiveness across the board.

Tracking offline is often more difficult to keep up with but also just as important.  It could be as simple as asking the new clients that phone in where they found you or including it in the conversation when you meet with them.  For those selling products, you can include the “where did you find us?” question in the shopping cart sign up (online) or just ask the person buying from you and write it down.

Tracking does not need to be high-tech to be effective at giving you a bigger picture of where your marketing is working and where it isn’t.  Often times, asking your clients where they found you or how they heard of you can be great for tracking and conversational.

The point is folks, if you don’t track, you are losing out on bundles of info that you can use to get the edge upping the ROI from your marketing efforts.  Ultimately, if you can’t track it, you can’t tell how effective it is and then you end up with money spent ineffective marketing without the expected return.

I hope this post has been helpful for your business and I encourage you to start tracking as much as possible as soon as possible.  Here at Big Cloud Media we specialize in tracking.  We also specialize in installing tracking tools online, analyzing website analytics, comparing real-world numbers with online and offline marketing results and much more.  This is our passion so if you feel you don’t have the time to do it or the know how, we can help.  Once tracking is in place, you can then start seeing the benefits of it in the more effective marketing and the increased sales and client numbers that result from it.

Thanks for reading and contact us today if you would like to have a consultation about your online marketing and how to make it more effective.

Big Cloud Media

ps.  feel free to leave a comment about this topic or send it to someone you think will benefit.

Posted in The Big Cloud, The Buzz on { February 2nd, 2010 } ~ 3 Comments

Tagged with: analysis • analytics • consultation • effective • effectiveness • marketing • passion • ROI • specialize • tools • Tracking • web anlytics • website analytics • websites

Hey folks.

This post is about how to make sure your website headers match your content.  This is a short review of how to find them and also, what they should be.  You would be surprised how many website owners I have talked to that don’t know how Google and the other search engines are reading their content, and why it is being read a certain way.  Knowing and adjusting your website header content is a big step in getting your website on the right track for effective SEO and online marketing.

How do I see my website header tags and what is in them?

Here is how to check to see what your headers look like:

1. Visit your website.
2. Click “View” in your browser.
3. Click the “View Source” option.
4. When the source code loads, you should see something like the code listed below.  This blog is focusing on the meta tags “keywords” , “description”, and “title” just to keep things short.   They are labeled in like colors in the code below :

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="ltr" lang="en-US">

<head>

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />

<meta name="description" content="Big Cloud Media is an Arlington, TX based, web-design, development and marketing company that builds business websites, web-applications, and marketing solutions." />

<meta name="keywords" content="web-design, development, marketing, business, Search Engine Optimization, websites, website" />

<title>Big Cloud Media Custom Business Website Design, Development & Marketing</title>

These tags make up part of what is known as the web-page header.  They suggest to search bots how to list your page in their search results and how to categorize your site.

Website Meta Keywords

The website meta keywords can be found by the <meta name=“keywords” tag:

<meta name=“keywords” content=”web-design, development, marketing, business, Search Engine Optimization, websites, website” />

The content=”…” portion of this code is where you indicate which keywords you would like your site to be associated with.  The catch here though is that you want them to be relevant to your code in your webpage.  If they are not, it can hinder your SEO efforts.  It is a good idea to repeat the keywords that you want to be found by in your content several times so that your keywords line up with your content.  Do it with class though and make sure that the sentences make sense.  There isn’t a point in trying to appease the search engines if you lose visitors in the process.

The Meta Description:

The website meta description can be found by looking for the <meta name=”description” tag:

<meta name=”description” content=”Big Cloud Media is an Arlington, TX based, web-design, development and marketing company that builds business websites, web-applications, and marketing solutions.” />

The meta description is where you give the search engines a short blurb about the webpage.  This is often, in the Google search, the description that shows up under the search result.  Sometimes the search engines will create their own for your site but if your description matches your content, it is likely Google will use it.  Having an accurate and concise description of your site will also help your SEO efforts later on down the road.  The more your headers line up with the content, the better.

The Title Tag

The title tag is can be found by looking for the <title> tag:

<title>Big Cloud Media Custom Business Website Design, Development & Marketing</title>

The <title> tag is your page title and also the text that appears in your browsers window bar.  This should be intuitive and match up with your page content as well.  The theme here is continuity.  If your page is about Dogs, the title should include “Dogs” in it.  The title of your page helps in your suggestion to the search engines about how your site should be listed and in what categories and search terms.

Why should I care about my meta tags?

Ultimately, it all comes down to how search engine friendly do you want your site to be and also, what does the search engine see when it reads your page.  The more things that are missing, the less likely your site will be listed correctly and associated with the right search terms.  Checking your headers and making sure they are accurate can also help to make your SEO efforts more fruitful.

This blog came around from a real-world situation I recently came upon.  I recently met with a prospective client and after doing a site overview (which includes checking their header tags) we found random stuff in them including unrelated words, references to other companies, etc.  Their header tags were hindering their progression online and were definitely not helping their SEO efforts.  The prospective client had no clue until this was addressed by us.  Thus, this post, my effort to help you all know a little more about the content that represents you online.

If you have more questions about any of this, please leave a comment or contact us right away.  We would be more than happy to help you in your specific situation.

Thanks for reading and I hope that this post has been helpful for you.

Big Cloud Media

Posted in The Buzz on { December 8th, 2009 } ~ 12 Comments

Tagged with: Big Cloud Media • bigcloudmedia • code • content • description • effective • effectiveness • Google • keywords • meta • meta-tags • online marketing • SEO • source • tags • title • website • websites

Return on Investment. It’s what we are in business for and ultimately, what we expect out of our investments at the end of the day.  So why not expect the same out of our online investments, such as our websites and online marketing efforts? The Return on the Online Investment is often ignored in the rush to achieve online web presence and to start establishing a basis for being found online.  What represents your business online?  Your website does and it does a fine job of it.  Is it sending the right message though?  If you send 10,000 people there will it result in sales?  If it is not selling your product or bringing in more customers now, it probably wouldn’t do so with a crazy increase in traffic.  Unless you know where you are at, with your website, you can’t hope to get where you are going (except by luck maybe).  Knowing the return you currently get on your website is the stepping stone to planning what you would like to have as the return on your website and how to get there.  I hate to say it but if your business website is yielding no return (either in clients or sales) than something must be done because you have wasted money or time and your potential biggest asset is not doing the job it should be. It is time to get back to the nitty gritty of what your online purpose is.  This is the new focus of Big Cloud Media as a web-design and development / marketing company.  Get back to the roots of why businesses are online in the first place and re-engineer the experience and the presence to maximize and reach that reason.  Through a unique combination of website analytics analysis and the analysis of both online and offline marketing, we can establish what works and what doesn’t, where the problems are and where the excellence lies, and ultimately, where the money has been spent and where it needs to be spent, in order to get the greatest ROI. A business’s online presence is an investment.  Plain and simple.  It can also be the most awesome marketing / sales tool, ever, if done correctly.  Think of it as an extension of your business to the masses that have never heard of you or met you.  You can communicate through it to your customers and potential clients.  You can customize the user experience to maximize the comfort and ease of use for your customers.  It can be used at all hours at any time of day and the space is yours to do with what you please.  You build it, nurture it, keep it in good shape and it will, in one way or another, continually return the money put into it.  It is the face of your company online, the first sales person an online visitor meets, and a great marketing and communications tool that never sleeps, never eats and costs little to maintain.  Therefore, your website should be at the forefront of your marketing program, not the backend.  Especially considering you can send people there at any time of day, with relatively inexpensive marketing and have it work its magic over and over again. I guess my point is this, businesses need to adopt the idea that their website is an investment.  Only then will the website and online presence really start working for the business.  Once this idea takes hold, it can be adopted into themarketing plan to keep the website at the forefront of marketing efforts and therefore, keep the always-working, never-stopping, creative-as-you-want-to-make-it marketing engine, that is the website, in the shape that it should be in, to really compete with your competition online and start getting a Return on the investment already made online. If you have any questions about how to turn things around and start doing more with your website or online marketing activities, or you haven’t taken that vital step yet to get your business online, please contact us today and we will be happy to talk to you more about your situation and what can be done about it.  Realizing the issue exists is the first and most often, hardest problem.  Do something about it and start on the road to a more successful online presence.

Posted in The Buzz on { November 13th, 2009 } ~ 4 Comments

Tagged with: Big Cloud Media • business • effective • effectiveness • investment online • online investment • questions • redesign • return on investment online • ROI • web analytics • website • website analytics • websites

Big Cloud Media is proud to announce that we now offer 2 different kinds of SEO solutions for your business.  SEO is Search Engine Optimization and it is a blanket term for any techniques that will help to raise your ranking in the search engines.

Our new SEO program takes it a step further and is focused on not only getting your website first search page presence when certain keywords are searched, but taking up 4-6 spots on that first search results page.  Imagine your website showing up in 5 results on the first page of the google search instead of 1 result.  This is an incredible advance in the SEO world and the results are guranteed.

If you are interested in applying this innovative SEO technique to your website give us a call at 210-373-7352 and we can discuss it more in detail with you and answer any questions you may have.

Thank you for reading and God bless.

Big Cloud Media

Posted in The Big Cloud, The Buzz on { September 30th, 2009 } ~ 3 Comments

Tagged with: Big Cloud Media • bigcloudmedia • business • effective • effectiveness • Google • search engine optimization • SEO • websites

How many times have you looked at your website and wondered just how effective it is?  Have you ever wondered where the people that visit are coming from or what search terms they used to get there?  If you have wondered these things, you are reading the right post because we are going to look into the awesome world of website analytics and go over some of the key info you can gather using them.

Why do analytics matter?

Through analyzing website analytics, you can gather info about the activities of your website visitors which you  can then compare to your marketing actions, giving you a big picture view of what is going on with your website and how effective it and your marketing is.  Combine this info with information that you collect regularly about your clients and you can start to understand why your visitors do what they do when they go to your website, be it buying, calling or leaving.  As in any situation, the more you know, the better the decisions you can make.

What can analytics track?

In this post, I will be talking about Google Analytics because that is what I use for me and my clients and that is what I am most familiar with.  Using Google Analytics you can track over time:

• Visitor Trends
• # of visits
• Referring websites (where they came from)
• Search terms used to find your site
• Location (down to the city) of visitors
• Visitor operationg systems and browsers
• Visitor connection speeds
• Popular pages
• Visitor time on the site, etc.

The list above is actually only a fraction of the information you collect on your visitors through analytics.  The beauty of it is that you can make changes to the site and compare the analytics results to the results before the changes were made, giving you a way to trend your visitor activities and really get a great idea of the effectiveness of those changes.

Where Can I Get Analytics?

Here is the best part of all of this, website analytics are free.  Go to Google.com/analytics, and sign up for them.  From there, copy and past the tracking code into the bottom of your website pages (right before your ending </body> tag), check your Google Analytics page to make sure it is working and you are good to go.  There are a slew of other website analytics companies that you can get your analytics from, so don’t think Google Analytics are the only ones.  I am most familiar with Google Analytics so that’s what I wrote on.

Analyzing the Analytics

If you need help analyzing your analytics, contact us right away because that’s one of the things we do and we do it well.  Call us at 210-373-7352 with any questions you have and we will be happy to help you.

I hope this has been informative and helpful to you.  If you don’t have analytics on your site, get them and start gathering the info.  Information is powerful and the more you have, the more effective your site and your company can be.

God bless.

Koji Flowers (Big Cloud Media)

Posted in The Big Cloud on { August 21st, 2009 } ~ 3 Comments

Tagged with: analytics • analyzing • Big Cloud Media • business • companies • effective • effectiveness • Google Analytics • Information • trends • visitor • visitors • website • websites