When you were in school, your teacher graded every paper you did. Sometimes you got an A, sometimes your might have failed. Your internet content should be subjected to the same scrutiny, if you want success. Only by giving your content an accurate test and grade, can you determine your next steps. This is one of the basic steps you must learn to succeed.
Not all content and sales pages are created equal. Sometimes it takes only minor changes to give your site dramatic changes in performance. If you’re not testing, you’ll never know the success or failure of your efforts. This is one area most beginning internet marketers fail to implement, and may never know the reason for their failure.
One of the first things you must monitor and test is traffic to your site. You need to know if your efforts in creating backlinks, and spreading content around the internet is working. One of the best tools for accomplishing this task is Google Analytics. You will need a Google account to setup for Analytics. The instructions on Google’s site are very simple, and you should be able to easily add the code to your website.
If you are using a blog, you should be able to install a simple plug-in to activate Google Analytics, and just add your unique account code for this test. With Google Analytics installed, you will be able to get a daily report of changes in traffic, explore where your traffic comes from, and even see what keywords were used while searching. This information is invaluable. When you learn you are getting traffic on a specific phrase, you can optimize for it, and draw in even more traffic.
Google analytics will also allow you to track conversions or actions. By setting up properly you can test if your visitors are following the path you intended, and taking the actions you desire. This makes it very easy to adjust your offers, and then to analyze if the changes are increasing your conversion rates or not.
On free content sites you may not be able to use Analytics. A good example would be EzineArticles. In this case you need to rely on the articles views reported by EzineArticles, and to monitor incoming traffic to your primary site. You’ll be able to see the traffic being generated from EzineArticles and evaluate your effectiveness. You can even drill down and see specifically which articles are sending the traffic to your primary site.
This level of feedback from your traffic generating sites can be very beneficial. You can then test by changing titles, and changing your resource box to see exactly what contributes to higher traffic to your offers.
As you can see, your website, blogs and content all need to be graded just as thoroughly as your teachers did in school. Only by measuring your results can you make adjustments, keep the winners, and quit working on the losers. This internet marketing tip can be the difference between increasing your income every month, or watching your profit wither away. Start testing today, and soon you’ll be a statistics junkie, when you see the power of knowing your real results.