Analytics

This is the beginning of a new Wednesday marketing series I'm going to write for the small business person. What qualifies me to write this? I've worked in advertising for decades. And the last several years I have taken numerous classes devoted to web marketing and run my own experiments in SEO (That's Search Engine Optimization for you newbies). I've gotten an education by trial and error.

One of the things I've learned from analytics is that people frequently look for cupcake glass beads so I always make sure I have some in every shop! .

I was going to begin with the importance of a Facebook Fan page... but I quickly realized that is putting the cart before the horse. Before you can start implementing changes, you have to understand what people are searching for when they find you, which of those searches benefit you and your business and which don't.

And the most powerful tool to do that with is Google Analytics. It is excellent and FREE! If you have a blogger account, you already have a google account. If you have set up anaylitics, just hit the blue ACCESS button. If not, hit signup below the blue button and do the basic account set up. Once there, you want to scroll to the bottom and add a website profile.  Enter the address and it will give you some code to paste into your website.

If you are an Etsy or Artfire seller, you will have to turn on Google analytics from within those apps. And even though you can check your stats on those websites, the analytics site is much more thorough in helping you understand what's going on and how people are finding you.

Why do you need to know how people are finding you?? To make it easier to find you! For that, you need to do a little research on what people search for...with another free google tool, called the Keyword Tool. (Did I mention?? Google ROCKS!)

Head over there and enter every possible search term for finding your business. Here's the one I did:

And even though I only typed in five search terms, Google gives me a whole page of suggestions...ones I've taken to heart (and action!).

The first thing I see is that glass beads is a far more common search term than lampwork beads...but still that 27,000 hits I have the potential to capitalize on... so I work BOTH terms into my keywords.

I also learned that many people are looking to buy them wholesale. And while I can't really do this on my Etsy / Artfire sites, I can offer wholesale glass beads on my glass beads website. Hey... did you notice how I just used top level key words in my two links??? That's how it's done! You should be blogging with your keywords as well!

Your homework this week is to get your anayltics set up and to snoop around keywords for your items. If you can, use those keyword suggestions in your listings titles, copy and tags.