SearchInfluence

One of the main purposes of our weekly 5 For Friday posts is to highlight weekly news stories that are funny, idea-provoking or just plain interesting. In this brand-new blog series, we’ll be publishing a monthly roundup of links that directly pertain to you and your business. With these tips and tricks, you can promote your online presence and make your social media profiles sing. DIY tactics can have big results! Without further ado, check out these handy posts and articles:

If you work in interactive marketing, you’re are probably familiar with comScore and its monthly estimate of the United States search market share that consistently looks like the following graph, reflecting data collected September 2011. It’s safe to assume that these numbers apply to the websites that you promote as well, right? Not really.

For the past few years, it seems like every dataset that I’ve seen contradicts these market share reports, so I decided to dig a little deeper and see what I can find.

A Look at the Growing Trend of Internet Marketing Con-men

We’ve all seen these people at conferences, pimping out their extra shiny business cards and talking like late-night infomercials – the online business strategists and social media experts. They claim to have the secrets to creating a successful online brand and promise “more profitable business now” if only you are willing to hear the pitch. They use buzz words like “online reputation score” and “viral marketing” to excite business owners into trusting their expertise and ultimately signing up for expensive year long contracts but never promise actual results.

Upon installing the Google Analytics code on your Web site, you will have an abundant amount of information to navigate through relating traffic sources and visitor information.

To begin analyzing your Web site’s data, go to http://www.google.com/analytics/ – Click “Access Analytics” (blue button on the right side) and login using your Google account, under which the installation was made.

The first screen is the Overview page.

To access the Dashboard with all the data for your site make sure the “View Reports” drop down menu on the top left corner displays your site’s name correctly.

I posted a link to Matt McGee‘s 7 Questions Small Businesses Should Be Asking and got this question from one of our customers, Steve Kinchen at Hall Piano Company.

It was a great excuse to do a little impromptu analysis. We may do a brief series of these.

Hall Piano Company Local Search Analysis using Matt McGee's 7 Questions Businesses should be asking.

Steve Kinchen: Read the article… How does HPC stack up?

Will Scott: Pretty darn good, I’d say.

By @mattmcgee‘s standards you’re pretty well covered

1. How do the search results look for my company name?