Whether you like it or not, it is likely that there will come a time in your internet marketing career where you will need to use the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) to transfer files from your computer to a web server. Unless you are fortunate enough to have a web developer on stand by for those occasions. FTPing a file may sound scary to some, but there is really nothing to it. In simple terms, transferring a file by FTP is like copying a file from one folder to another within “My Computer”, except the originating folder is on your computer and the folder you are copying to is on your web server. I have shown several illiterate clients over the years how to FTP in a matter of minutes. What’s more, I am writing this post to give you a snapshot of how to get a file from your computer to a web server.

Let’s get started…

Transferring a File by FTP

First off you will need an FTP client (software). There are many freebies out on the web. I prefer to use CoreFTP, this is what I will use for this post. FileZilla is another popular one. Whichever you choose, the process will be roughly the same.

Visit: http://www.coreftp.com/ download and install Core FTP

Open the software and you will be given a “Site Manager” window, here we need to configure a new site.

Click “New Site” in the bottom left corner of the window. Now fill in the blanks as follows:

Site Name – Pick a name to refer to your site (this doesn’t have to be your url)

Host/IP/URL – Here you will need to enter your domain name (without the http://www) or the site IP address, if you have it. The IP address will look something like 70.32.116.20

Username – This is your FTP username

Password – This is your FTP password

All other settings can be left alone. Now click “Connect”. After connecting, you’ll be given a screen split into four areas. The top row displays the processing information and a log of all actions performed while connected to the server. The middle left column displays the files on your hard drive and the right hand column displays the files on the server. Finally the bottom row displays a log of current actions performed, i.e. CoreFTP lets you know where it is at when you start uploading files.

To upload a file to the server, you simply navigate to the correct folder/file on your hard drive (in the left column). When you have found the file click and drag it over to the relevant directory/folder in the right column (the web server). You might want to drill down to the correct folder on  the server-side first, since you cannot change the folder as you are dragging. Most files will transfer quickly, the larger the file, the longer it will take.

The process can be reversed just as easily. To copy a file from the web server back to your hard drive, click the file in the right window and drag it to the left window.

Note, this process of dragging will COPY the file from one location to another, it will not “move” it as it would if dragging files to different folders within your hard drive.

Have a favorite FTP client that you like to use? Tell me which it is and why you like it in the comments below.

Google Analytics is a great (and free) tool for measuring website metrics. You won’t find a better tool out there that won’t charge you a fee for their services.

I’ve written this post as a resource for clients and non clients alike, to provide the basics of navigating Google Analytics and getting the most out of the software.

This post assumes that you have the necessary analytics code installed on your site and is correctly capturing data. If you do not have the code installed, here’s the Google Analytics installation instructions. If you are unsure, here’s how to do a quick check.

1. Navigate to your website
2. Click “view” from the menu and “view source”
3. With the view source window open, press Ctrl F (windows) to open the find window
4. Type “google-analytics.com”. If you find that in your code, then its likely you have Google Analytics installed. Although this won’t check if its installed correctly

With that said, lets get on with the Guide to Google Analytics…

Accessing Your Website Analytics

Visit Google.com and sign in via the link in the top right hand corner. Enter your login information. Once logged in you will need to click the “Analytics” button to access your website account “Dashboard” and view your stats.

The Google Dashboard is essentially a summary of your web metrics. Look at it as your web metrics homepage. The following sections will explain the main features of the tabs located in the left hand column of your Dashboard page. Topics covered are: Visitors; Traffic Sources; Content and Goals.

Visitors Overview

The first tab covers statistics that relevant to your visitors. It answers questions like, how many people visited my website? etc. Take a look at the date range to the top right of the screen. This can be changed to show stats for a different date range by clicking the gray arrow to the right of the last date. The default is set for the past 30 days. Note: This date range setting is applicable to all metrics from the dashboard.

The Visitor graph display provides a visual look at your traffic trends.

The following information displays numeric figures relating to your website visitors during the time period specified above. Here’s what they mean:

Visits: Total number of all visits to the site

Absolute Visitors: Total number of “unique visitors” to the site, does not include visitors who viewed the site more than once

Pageviews: Total number of pages viewed by all visitors

Average Pageviews: Average number of pages viewed per visitor

Time on Site: Average amount of time spent on the site by all visitors

Bounce Rate: Percentage of web visitors who only viewed one page

New Visits: Percentage of visitors who were visiting the site for the first time

Each of the breakdown figures above are clickable for more detail.

The next section of the Visitors area is “Visitor Segmentation”. This is basically a browsable area of more information based on user location, operating systems, languages etc. Click the links in this section for details.

The bottom of the page features the “Technical Profiles” of the hardware used to access your site, such as browsers used and connection speeds. This particularly important when designing your website for cross browser compatibility. Again, the information is clickable for details.

Traffic Sources

In this section you can learn about where your visitors came from and how they found you.

The first part features numeric metrics and a pie chart to visually show you the sources of your traffic.

Direct Traffic: Visitors to your site who got there directly by entering your url in the browser address bar. These visitors may have got your url from printed literature of clicked a link in an email

Referring Sites: Visitors who clicked a link on another website that sent them to your website

Search Engines: Visitors who found your site after performing a search on a search engine website like Google.

The “Top Traffic Sources” section provides a breakdown of the search engines and other sites that linked visitors to your site and includes the keywords that they used to find you.

The Traffic Sources section is a great tool to use when determining the best methods to optimize your website for search engines (SEO).

Content

Here you learn about which of your web pages were looked at the most and which pages your visitors clicked to within your site after “landing” there.

Pageviews: Total number of pages viewed on your site by all visitors

Unique Views: Total number of pages viewed by unique visitors, i.e., this would not include visitors who have been to your site before and clicked the same pages

Bounce Rate: Percentage of web visitors who only viewed one page

The following sections are clickable and provide details on navigation, optimization and click patterns as follows:

Navigation Summary: How visitors found your content

Entrance Paths: How visitors navigated through your site to get to your content

Entrance Sources: Top sources of traffic for each page

Entrance Keywords: Top keywords used to find each page

Site Overlay: A transparent overlay view of your website that visually shows you which buttons or links were clicked most.

At the bottom of the “Content” page you will find a breakdown of the number of visitors to each page of your site. The most popular being first and working down to the least popular. The top five pages are displayed here but you can click for the complete list.

Use this section to determine where to place or direct visitors to the content that you want them to see. You can also use this area to help determine why these pages are popular and replicate the format or structure for the pages that are most important.

Goals

The last section covered in this reference guide is for “Goals”. The area allows you to set up and record “goals”. Goals are records of conversions from your website. In most cases a goal could be to get your visitor to fill out a contact form, or buy a product. These goals (or conversions) can be recorded automatically by Google Analytics. You can then monitor these goals and tweak, update and restructure your website to “funnel” more conversions.

To set up a goal, follow the instructions on the “Goal Overview” page.

Conclusion

This concludes my “Google Analytics Quick Reference Guide” although, I realize that I have only scratched the surface in this guide on all you can do with Google Analytics.

Do you already use Google Analytics? What do you or don’t you like about it? Tell me about it in the comments below.

This is my first ever “guest post”. I’ve known this guest poster for a number of years, during which time he’s developed quite a niche for himself in the realm of podcasting. We actually first met during a podcast he recorded of myself on the subject of SEO. You can listen to that podcast here. Without further babbling, i’d like to introduce Michael Surkan of PracticalPodcasting.com and his guest post. Thanks for contributing Michael!

It’s all about who you know…

Whether you are trying to get new customers to grow your business, establish lucrative partnerships or even just get a job, it has always been important to know the right people. Having good products, skills, or qualifications, is all well and good, but unless you have a relationship with a person at a company you want to do business with no one will ever take the time to discover how great your products or skills really are.

With so many people and products competing for attention these days the only way to break through all the marketing noise is to go to a friend.

We all know this in our own lives when our first instinct is to get on the phone and call a friend when we need something. It is so much more comforting to know we are buying a critical service for our business from someone we know rather than an anonymous web site. Hiring someone who we already know, and trust, is far in a way preferable to taking a gamble with someone we have never met who sent in a resume. It simply takes a LOT more effort from our overworked lives to do the necessary research to ensure that the supplier or job candidate is dependable.

This leaves business people or job candidate who don’t have those critical friendships at the companies they want to do business with out in the cold. Advertising and direct mail have become ineffective. You’d stand as good a chance getting an interview for a job by placing your resume into a black hole as filling out a job application.

Unfortunately, all the new internet social media venues just make things worse. Twitter, Facebook and blogs are just creating even more noise. Whether you are a sales or marketing person trying to find customers or a job seeker looking for a job it’s become a Herculean task to stand out and be noticed.

Podcasting to the Rescue!

When Microsoft let me go in July 2009, after 9 years in product and program management, I was up against the wall of one of the most challenging economic climates any of us can remember. My 20 years of experience in the IT industry didn’t seem to count for anything. No one was returning my calls and submitting hundreds of job applications never got more than an automated response. This was the first time in my career I was not able to quickly hop on a new job or find a business opportunity.

It quickly became apparent to me that I just didn’t have the friendships I needed to succeed professionally.

Out of desperation I started using podcasting as a networking tool and, to my utter amazement, found it exceeding my wildest expectations!

For years my friends and I would record a weekly phone call where we ranted about the economy and posted the conversation on a web site. I had no idea that the simple act of offering to interview people over the phone, and record the conversations for a web site, would open doors that had previously been locked shut.

No sooner had I created a web page with the title “Entrepreneurs Northwest” and sent out e-mail invitations to local entrepreneurs and professionals than I started getting responses from people who were eager to be guests on my podcast show. It wasn’t long before I had published recorded interviews with dozens of managers and owners of businesses. I created another web page called “Tales from the job search trenches” and began inviting recruiters and career coaches to speak to me with similar success.

The simple fact is that everyone wants to be famous! My podcast shows might not have many listeners but that really didn’t matter to the people I was inviting to speak with me. In a very real sense building an large audience has never mattered to me. The only audience that matters is the person I interview.

Not only was I able to build relationships with the people I interviewed but I also discovered that these people were doing their level best to promote these shows. Each of my guests would post the link to their interview on their web site, Facebook and Twitter pages.

Thanks to podcasting I am now gainfully employed once again. I have also been helping other people start podcast shows of their own and have now proven that this strategy can work for ANYONE!

Michael Surkan

You can learn more about my podcasting ideas at www.PracticalPodcasting.com where I offer advice, webinars, and services to help businesses and job seekers use podcasting as a networking tool.

Get $50!

I believe in Michael’s program and that’s why he’s given me a discount code to share with my audience for his upcoming webinar. On March 2, 2011 Michael will be hosting an hour long webinar program entitled “Podcasting – The Indispensable Tool for Building Relationships”. When registering use the code “beamond” to get a $50 discount on the program. Sign up for “Podcasting – The Indispensable Tool for Building Relationships” today.

Over the past couple of months, i’ve taken a fresh look at my blog. I’ve decided to be more consistent with my posts and experiment with a few features and updates, to get a feel for how I might begin to make some money from my efforts. I’ve taken some practical tips from Darren Rowse and Chris Brogan and have begun to implement what I have learned. I don’t have a huge amount of traffic yet (i’m working on that), so the results are yet to be seen. Here’s a few “improvements” that I’ve made to my site, which I plan to expand upon in coming months.

I added Google AdSense: I registered and added a Google AdSense block to the lower right column of all blog posts. You can register for this yourself via your Google account. It’s a straight forward process and provides you with the necessary code to implement on your site. Google AdSense is a PPC program where you receive commission on every click that the ad block receives. You can track all of your commissions in your Google Account.

I wrote an eBook: I wrote an eBook based on my knowledge of SEO. You can see details on my SEO eBook here. The reason for writing the eBook is two-fold. 1. It establishes me as an “author”, which yields great recognition in the industry and 2. It enables me to make passive income  on the knowledge that I share, via my landing page and checkout process through PayPal. You’ll see that i’ve added a banner to promote the eBook at the footer of each blog post.

I signed up for the Amazon Affiliate Program: The sign up process is a simple one, simply create an Amazon account and put in your request via  link in the left column from your account area. You will need to supply details of your site and what you plan to do with your partnership. It took me about a week to receive the approval email. Once approved you can log in and create affiliate links to any products found on amazon.com. When a user clicks one of those links and buys that product, you receive a commission on the sale. So far, I have used the program to set up affiliate links for two books, that i’ve posted in recent blog posts here and here. Note, in my current affiliate status, I will only receive commission from Amazon on those specific products that I am promoting on my blog. If someone clicks through to Amazon by one of my links but buys something different, I wont get commission. I believe this restriction is lifted when I reach a certain level (but don’t quote me on that).

I listed my eBook on Kindle store: Since my eBook is electronic, I thought it would make sense to make it available for download on the Kindle store. Again, I had to apply to the Kindle Store Program and go through an approval process. Once I was approved, I simply had to complete an online form, upload my book and a cover image. It took only 24 hours for my book to appear on the Kindle Store site. I had a little trouble with the formatting of the book, since Amazon reformats the book automatically for Kindle. In the end I had to cut out most of the imagery in my book and create a text version in Microsoft Word for it to appear correctly. I found that PDF’s don’t convert well. I know this now for next time. Here’s my book on the Kindle Store:

“Beyond Keywords” is also available for purchase from the Kindle Store.

I added “Share” buttons: You’ve probably noticed the FaceBook “Like” and Twitter “Tweet” buttons at the top and bottom (FaceBook) of my posts. These buttons aren’t going to make me any direct money, but they will encourage readers to share my posts and content, who in turn, may make a purchase or click a revenue generating link.

So there you have it. The monetizing of my blog is certainly a work in progress, but I wanted to share with you a few things that I have done so far.

What are some of the things you have done to monetize your blog or website? Let me know in the comments below.

I follow many people all over the web each for a different reason, generally the people I follow have similar interests to myself or work in a similar industry or subject area to me. It occurred to me that my readers might like to learn why I follow certain people in kind of a “review” capacity. By the way, when I say “follow” I don’t specifically mean on Twitter, although that’s a part of it, I’m more referring to reading their blog, emails and following them on social networks. The main purpose for me following is that I might learn something about them and the Internet Marketing industry that I am deeply involved in and passionate about.

Ok, so enough ramblings, the first in my “Why I follow” series is Chris Brogan.

I first heard about Chris Brogan in a response someone had written to a Question posted on LinkedIn. I forget the exact question but i believe it was something to do with Social Media. The responder suggested Chris Brogan as an expert in the field. I subsequently clicked over to his site (this was back in about 2003 I believe), browsed a few articles and left. At the time, I remember thinking it would be great to be recommended by someone in a public setting like that. Over subsequent years, Chris’s name appeared periodically in articles and other mentions on websites. As I got more involved in internet marketing and departed from traditional marketing for the most part, the frequency of Chris Brogan mentions increased.

Today I follow Chris on Twitter and subscribe to his blog. Why? Over the past 12 months, I have learned a lot about Chris and could summarize him as an expert in the fields of social media, marketing, (human) business and blogging. I believe Chris to be one of the most transparent professionals in the space. He never try’s to force his products on you, obviously his blog is a revenue source for him, but Chris goes so far as to openly declare when he uses an affiliate link and how he is partnered with some of his advertisers. This gives his readers/users confidence in him, in that he’s not trying to trick or manipulate in any way. Chris does a great job of using his knowledge in the space along with transparency to build trust and recognition, thus a platform for multiple successful businesses. I’ve learned a lot from Chris over the past year in particular. Here’s a few things that Chris is involved in/owns, pulled from the post “The Evolution of Chris Brogan”

Escape Velocity

Human Business Works

CrossTech Ventures

The Pulse Network

New Marketing Labs

Kitchen Table Companies

… and of course ChrisBrogan.com. Click over there today and learn more about Chris Brogan.

He is also co-author of an aptly named book, “Trust Agents”. You can look more and purchase via the AFFILIATE link below

Have you had an experience with Chris, or have something to add about why one might follow him, enter your thoughts in the comments below. Thanks!

Wonder Wheel Tool Summary

I’m sure you are aware by now that Google’s enterprise extends far beyond that of a traditional search engine. The tool that I would like to talk about today is the “Wonder Wheel”. A glamorous name for a fun tool that can be accessed via the search engine. Essentially, the “Wonder Wheel” is a tool for searchers to help them find what they are looking for, by providing a very visual look at search terms relative to the keywords they enter into the search field. To access the Wonder Wheel, click over to Google.com (this link opens a new window), enter a search phrase in the search box. A list of results will be displayed. Look at the left column of settings/options, you’ll see “Wonder Wheel” listed underneath “All results” (you may need to click “more search tools”). Click the Wonder Wheel link, this will display Google’s Wonder Wheel. Note that the regular search results will be pushed to the right of the screen so that they are still accessible. You will notice that the Wonder Wheel is a simple spider diagram showing your search phrase in the center with related terms/keywords at the tip of each “leg”. Clicking these related terms will extend the wheel and place the clicked term at the center. As you continue to click deeper into the wheels’ related terms, the search results to the right will continue to change to provide you with relevant results.

How to Use the Wonder Wheel for SEO and SEM

So now you know what the wheel is, how do you use it to improve SEO and for SEM campaigns? Look at Google’s Wonder Wheel as a visual “keyword selector tool“. Although the wheel does not show traffic or search data for the relative terms, its does provide you with a quick look at which terms are relevant to your main keywords. You can see the types of terms that Google perceives as relevant to your keywords of choice, and use them to focus on when optimizing your site for search engines. Maybe you find that your main keywords are just too competitive to have chance at a good ranking? In these cases you can focus on relative keywords that might be less competitive and provide access to similar customers/traffic.

Same goes for your paid search campaigns, the Google Wonder Wheel can help you hone in on relevant terms that you can then enter into your keyword selector tool to assess the competition and search volume for those terms. I’ve found the Google Wonder Wheel to be a great tool for providing a quick high-level overview of relative keywords and phrases, that I can then use as a basis for more in depth research.

Have a Google Wonder Wheel success story? Or something to add? Tell us about it in the comments below.

By the way, here’s Google’s overview of the Wonder Wheel, although it is more from a “searchers” perspective.

You may have noticed a banner ad floating around blog posts on this site of late, promoting a new eBook that I’ve have just launched. The book talks about the fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization and is a comprehensive guide to my successful SEO Strategy that I have implemented for several clients.

Why Did I Write This eBook?

Over the past several years I have spent a lot of time in the SEO field. During this time I have learned that SEO is commonly misconceived by professionals as “plugging in a few keywords in the appropriate places, and your good”. My new eBook, “Beyond Keywords”, puts SEO into perspective and answers many common questions, as well as providing a few strategic step-by-step “how to’s” for implementation.

Click over to the “Beyond Keywords” download page for complete details, including page samples and testimonials.

Thanks!

Recently, I had the pleasure of being included in a web radio show. I was asked to present to an audience of authors on how to market their books using the internet. The subject is broad and there is much to cover in the 45 minute slot that I had, so I employed the tactic of touching on the following key aspects:

• SEO – How to choose and use your keywords
• Blogging – What is the advantage of blogging?
• Social Media – Using FaceBook, Twitter and LinkedIn and how are they different
• Selling your book – Lulu, Amazon and ebay
• Strategy – Tying it all together

The following media clip is a direct recording from the show. Hit Play, then scan across to about the ninth minute, where the Internet Marketing content begins.

Have you written a book, and have further questions? Post them in the comments below. Thanks!

Although sweepstakes do bring in a large amount of non relative “fans”, there are for sure amongst those, fans that are relative and may not have heard about your company before, OR, they may have heard about you but not understood your business. Once you’ve captured this new audience, now your focus becomes one of retention and engagement, so that once your sweepstakes is over, you will keep those fans that you captured. To retain your audience a strategy needs to be implemented so that you can engage your fans intentionally.

Take a look at my FaceBook marketing strategy

Anything to add? How could a Sweepstakes approach fit into your social media strategy?