Facebook and many other social media avenues are taking the world by storm. They’re becoming one of the top used applications on smart phone devices, computers and tablets. It is rare to meet someone who isn’t apart of a social media platform and even more rare to not find businesses on them too.
As the popularity of Facebook continues to grow, businesses and website owners are becoming even more sucked in to the Facebook pages realms. Many create these Facebook “pages” in hopes to get likes from all over the world and have thousands upon thousands of fans. When you’re starting to grow and seeing more people on your Facebook page, you’ll also notice more data is appearing in the Facebook Insights, which is Facebook pages analytics for your specific fan page.
Many don’t really look over these analytics excessively like we do with Google Analytics and Bing Analytics, but should we be?
You’d be amazed at the data recorded by Facebook within the Insights area. Many are just trying to get a large amount of likes and comments on specific posts, but did you know you could cater your page even more to specific countries & regions by simply checking out your Insights?
Facebook Insights provides a wide array of information including:
When you’re attempting to increase the number of fans you have on your Facebook Page, this is an area you will want to review. Having the ability to know where you’re being accessed from can play a major role on your overall fan like success.
By doing relevant posts to popular regions, you’re more likely to grab attention of your readers. You are providing relevant information & posts to their region, meaning they’ll like the post and their friends could also see it & like it too.
The following is an example of a Facebook Pages Insights screen. As you can see, it is displaying a good amount of information all specific to your own Facebook Page.
*Information blacked out for privacy purposes and varies for each individual Facebook Insights screen.Another thing you’ll be able to benefit from with the Facebook Insights is determining countries and cities you want to reach that are lower. You may have a small handful of people in these regions but want to increase it. The insights allows you to see where your fans are located and gives you the opportunity to increase the numbers by providing these regions information they want.
You can view your insights information for quite a few months allowing you to see the increase and decrease of data being pulled. This allows you to gauge if your processes are working or not, giving you the necessary testing information to continue successfully.
Knowing the markets you’re reaching can play a major role in your success as a Facebook Page owner. This information gives you a lot of knowledge for who is liking you and where they are from. You can cater to your popular regions as well as introduce smaller regions to you by simply posting relevant information on your Facebook Page regularly.
There is one method of website monetization that has attracted attention from thousands throughout the United States, UK and Canada, affiliate marketing. Many are led to believe it is a quick and easy way to start making money online, but little do they know this is not actually the truth. There is much more to affiliate marketing then just throwing up a few banners and promotions.
With the vast amount of secrets behind affiliate marketing, it is hard to know if you’ll be successful or not with it. Affiliate marketing is one of the more complicated and stressful methods of website monetization. You have probably seen the ads, make money quick now. We’ve all seen those ads. The companies claiming if you put their stuff on your website you’ll be making money over night.
Sadly, this is completely false. It is rare for someone to make money over night, unless they’ve already optimized their websites and already ranking, and now decide to put the affiliate marketing side of things up. Most people find it can actually take months before they see a penny from this method. It can of course be very frustrating and a big cause of many not following through with it.
Affiliate marketing takes time. It takes lots of work hours and lots of patience. Without dedicating yourself to either, you will not get anywhere.
Some of the biggest lies on the Internet appear when you’re being told about affiliate marketing. Many are led to believe you’ll make millions, you won’t have to do much work. Sorry ladies and gents, this is far from the truth. Making junk loads of money will depend on you and the amount of effort & time you’re willing to commit. It will also depend on the companies you decide to work with. Some will not have high ratio sales while others will. This is where doing some company research will be beneficial.
As for the not having to work much. This is completely untrue. Sure, after you’ve developed yourself and have everything streamlined the work load may seem like less, but you will never have the ability to stop for good. Affiliate marketing takes a lot of updating and a lot of effort. If you decide to stop working then you may find yourself slowly depreciating.
It is disappointing that there are so many lies on the Internet when discussing affiliate marketing. It however is common because it is a part of the Internet marketing world that is highly competitive and something many are hoping to be successful at.
The biggest issue experienced in affiliate marketing is the money making aspect. The only way you are going to make decent amounts of money is if you have decent rankings. To get decent rankings you will be doing endless amounts of work, tons of SEO and tons of headaches.
Making money online is said to be easy, but in reality it is not. There are some people who have been working online for over 10 years and still struggle. Everything depends on the quality of website you have and the amount of time you are willing to dedicate.
Understanding your websites traffic is something that in many cases can be very hard to translate. There is so much information all sitting in front of you, but determining how to use it to benefit your business/website can be confusing. In this post we are going to discuss how to determine when your site is actually getting traffic. Knowing when your readers are reading is important, and also a great way to distribute those posts during peak hours.
Many wouldn’t consider times when it comes to the actual time their blog posts go live, but did you know this could actually play a major role in the popularity of your posts?
The time you post your content will vary with every single site you own. If you’re like us, you got several different websites, in several different niche markets that attract various groups of people. Some websites may have increased traffic at night, while others may be during the day. Every website is different, so don’t expect the time to be the same for each website you create.
During your peak hours, this is your posting window. This is when the opportunity to get seen by your readers is increased and they are more likely to take action. Your posting window can play a big role on your overall success. If you’re not providing your readers with something during these hours, what are they going to do? Go to a different website of course.
One thing you shouldn’t feel is that you have to post at the extra same time each and every day. This is one thing that has been very misleading to website owners and bloggers for years. You don’t need to have a new post up every day. Yes, it can be great to have a new post up daily, but is this benefiting you any?
Providing your readers with quality content several times a week versus mediocre content daily, in some cases multiple times a day, could be beneficial for you. Keeping your website content at a quality level will increase your chances at success compared to the people who post about everything under the sun.
The timeframe that you should post in isn’t actually going to be one specific hour. Throughout your day, there will be various jumps. Spread your posts out and don’t stick to the same time everyday.
Alright, now to the holy grail question; how do I know what time my traffic is higher than others? Well ladies and gents, this is where your analytics will come in handy. Most people look at their analytics by the day, week or month. When you’re trying to determine hours of popularity, change this to hourly.
The hourly view will show you the various points throughout your days that are slow, medium and high. It is easily seen in the graphs and with a little hovering you will soon know what time your website is getting the most traffic.
Not all analytics will provide this information, but Google Analytics does and allows you to see for more than just a few days. You can see a month of traffic in a graph down to each hour of the day.
The graph will look something like this:
Google Analytics by the Minute
Now, everyone’s graph will look different as we stated already. The amount of traffic your website receives will be different for every website, even if they are in the exact same niche market and similar topics. It all plays on your social media referrals and the traffic you receive from the search engines.
It’s time to take control of your website and understand it by the minute. Your analytics provides more then just the popular content and keywords. Put it to work and learn all you need to know about your website and when people are actually hanging around!
When you are a website owner, you are instantly confronted with a lot of things to do. Between developing content, designing headers and all the in between you are now confronted with how your blog is actually laid out. It isn’t something many of us think of when we first start up. Our only thought is, do we want 2 columns, 3 columns and do I want them on the right or the left or both. Beyond that, we don’t think heavily about our layouts.
Of course, blogs are becoming very fancy and inputting a lot of different widgets. Headers seem to be getting bigger and bigger, but is this actually helping us or hurting us?
Yes ladies and gents it does!
When you’re creating a blog you first off don’t want one of those gigantic headers that may look pretty but not really do much for your readers. This is quality space that can be used to help get more content above the fold of your page and take away from the quality of your website.
Another thing we are seeing often is navigations that are jam packed full. Whatever happened to having the important things. These are the most important pages you want to appear on your navigation bar:
If you are a website plus a blog, take out a main topic and put your blog onto that navigation. Having a smaller navigation allows people to know what they can find instantly on your blog and get them exactly where they want. This can also help you avoid having 200 different categories. You don’t need a category for cookies, cakes & chocolate. Summarize it down to food or recipes, unless you are a foodie blog that is and then having the separate categories for food types is beneficial for you.
Example of Quality Layout
Your layout is the first thing people see. If it is all cluttered and too much going on, this could deter readers and in many instances advertising opportunities. People don’t want to advertise on a website that is jam packed full. It’s merely impossible to stand out when there are 50 other things around you. Simple designs, simple layouts.
The above layout is very simple, easy to navigate and you know exactly what you can do instantly. You are introduced to the first blog post and also have the navigation right away in front of you. It is a simple theme, yet very creative at the same time.
This is a question we hear a lot.
How many sidebars should I have?
Personally, one. If you’re a blog you technically only need one. The right side is the most common side to have the sidebar on. This is an area you can place your recent posts feed, social media buttons and a few advertisements. Don’t go over board. It won’t benefit you any. You want people reading your content don’t you? Why put all the focus elsewhere then?
There are sites that do have two sidebars and it is fine. It is just important to keep them clean. Mainly, double sidebars are used on blogs that have a static homepage that doesn’t have your recent blog posts appearing. The double sidebar is utilized to highlight various areas of your website and allow increased advertising. Generally, double sidebars are used on business websites as they do require more space.
Above the fold is what people see without touching their mouse to scroll. Everything they see is all they see above the fold. This is the area of opportunity to get people to continue down your page. If it is nothing but header and cluttered navigations, you aren’t setting an awesome impression right away. Keep the headers to an acceptable size and tone down those navigations. We don’t need to see all 20 categories right then. If you want to have your categories in your navigation, consider implementing a drop down on your categories label on the navigation. This looks cleaner and much more organized.
Your above the fold is the most important area of your blog. This is what gets people continuing through your site. Make them want to continue and attract their attention right away or you could miss out on readers navigating through your blog.
The best way to think of your blog is this is your store front. It is the first thing people see when they walk into your store and you want to impress them. Keep your layout clean and appealing. This will not only benefit you visually but also having a clean design can be beneficial for ranking purposes as well. Put some effort into your blog, this is what people see instantly and develop their opinions on you right away.