Since the latest “Big Daddy” Google update, and subsequent comments from Matt Cutts, it has become increasingly clear that Google has begun emphasizing the quality, or trust value, of a site and its links more than ever before.

Just because Google says it’s so doesn’t mean it is, right? Definitely. But, when the general terminology used by some of the most well-regarded webmasters and SEO’s changes, it’s time to take notice.

And that’s exactly what I picked up on today when reading one of Aaron Wall’s recent posts on his blog – It’s titled, “Usage Data Will Not Replace Link Reputation.” Notice he used the term “link reputation,” not “link popularity.” It’s the little things like wording that can make all the difference in how we perceive our world. And here is yet another example. For, whether true or not, Google has again changed the way the SEO community talks, acts, and ultimately, thinks.

P.S., please only link to this blog post if you have never participated in a link exchange program, submitted your site to a directory, and use exclusively “nofollow” tags on all your exchanged or sold links.

SEO | No Comments »

…and it’s not even a web analytics program.

It’s Google Calendar.

I’ve stressed before the importance of Event Tracking and its importance to site measurement.

Google Calendar has come along and proves to be the perfect tool for such tracking. The calendar is free, very easy to use, very quickly updated, and allows you to view multiple profiles on one calendar - so you can set up one for sales, one for any changes you make to a given site, or even one for each of your sites!

Every time you make a change, whether submitting an article or changing your meta tags, or posting on a blog, or… well, you get the idea, simply open up your calendar and make an entry stating what you did.

Why is this so important?

Because it’s so easy to forget the changes that you made, and when you made them. So a month from now, you may be looking at your statistics and saying, “Wow, well, I did something right. Wonder what it was?”

And, as I’m sure you can surmise, that is not the way to make your statistics work for you. Track your site’s performance, study what the numbers are telling you, record the change, and then measure/study again. In time, you’ll learn so much more. And you’ll have to do less trial and error as you draw on your deeper knowledge.

Give it a try.

Meanwhile, I’m off to make a calendar entry. “4/24 - posted in blog.”

Web Analytics | No Comments »

I’ve been using the new analytics program from Performancing for several weeks now on a handful of blogs. I have to say, it’s pretty darned impressive. I am having a couple of issue with it though, namely:

• Adsense click tracking doesn’t seem to be working
• It seems to be tracking pages as external links

Both of these are big enough issues that I’m going to contact the folks at performancing before I write a more thorough review.

Even with these two issues, I would put this piece of software right behind Google Analytics in terms of usefulness and user-friendliness. And it’s free, which, of course, rocks.

If you run a blog, you owe it to yourself to give it a spin. Installation is as simple as adding Google Analytics- just add some Javascript to your template.

Web Analytics | No Comments »