Not sure what the “Bounce” in your Analytics report mean?  Bounces - think of this as jumping on your trampoline with your friend, and you bounce them right off, landing somewhere else.
 
If you website is getting too many “bounces” then maybe you are not, no, YOU ARE NOT communicating to your potential customers well.  It is that simple. The surfer shows up to your site thinking you are one thing, you have a few seconds to show them your stuff, and they immediately turn around and leave. That could mean your site does not mean what the customer was looking for, or people were looking for something totally different, or it could mean you are very bad communicator in general.
 
Internet surfers in general are fairly driven to find the right information.  During the dark ages of dial-up, we had a rule of thumb that viewers would not wait more than 8 seconds for a page to load.  Page loading wait time has very little to do with communicating your product, it is simply a measure of efficiently.  So in the modern high speed internet, people want a confirmation of what they are looking for in at least under 8 seconds.  If they searched a keyword, they want confirmation NOW!
 
Common Sense about online Buyers: When was the last time someone walked up to Wal-Mart’s front door, walked in, looked around for 8 seconds and walked out?  It doesn’t happen.  People wanted “Wal-Mart”, they drove to Wal-Mart, and they shopped at Wal-Mart.  Buyers generally know exactly what they are looking for online, they don’t window shop like they are mall. 
 
Common Sense about online Surfers:  Surfers are like you mother-in-law, shopping with your wife on a Sunday while you watch a football game.  They drive to the mall, they walk all around, they may walk into some shops (or all of the shops), and they may buy one or two things.  Generally surfers online will find your website, but they are not really your target buyer, so if your website does not show strong sales to visitors, then maybe you are inviting in the wrong buyers.  Sometimes, visitors and views are a waist of your time. 
 
Example:  We have a great page on a local site about parks.  We silo the page’s content to include every single park in the Inland Empire of Southern California.  The problem is the page is on average the 4th highest ranked page on the site, and it has about a 75% bounce rate.  In simple terms, we too highly keyworded on the word “park” for our market place.  So we get a bunch of views, but no return visits, because the surfers are not in Southern California.

Anyone who sells SEO or search copy for your website should have a high ranking and a lots of back links to their website. I attended a very good program on writing Emails from a professional and experienced web writer. While I found no fault with her knowledge (in fact she has many good insights), her website Google ranking are seriously lacking.

The Google Ranking system is a logarithmic scale from 1 to 10. Getting a ranking of 2 or 3 is not difficult although requires well organized pages. This site has a 4 and just 11 back links on the main page, and NO ranking on the page that discusses Search Engine Optimization.

This is unacceptable.

While a 4 is respectable, most of the secondary pages are not even registered with Google. Here is the problem, this person can write fine copy, but she is not a webmaster and doesn’t understand the rest of the technical issues that Google needs to find the pages.

Words do not matter if Google doesn’t know they are there!

Contrast this with the RedFusion Media website that is ranked a 6 with 300 back links. To put this is rough proportions, it is much more difficult to get from a 5 to a 6 than from a 4 to a 5. Meaning the ranking from a 4 to a 6 is several times higher than just “2” more.

If you are serious about increasing your ranking, only companies that are achieving these results should be hired, because this is expensive. Most SEO people quote about $100 per page, after your website is built.

Writing is very important to increase your search position, but only the right combination of writing and technical tricks can get the job done.

More on Google PageRank

We have had a number of clients ask about alternative websites to market their products over the years like; eBay, MySpace, YouTube, Craig’s List, and others.  For many clients, you need to think about your brand and your operations before jumping into a solution that does not fit your marketing goals.  This being said, social networking sites really have become a great source for reaching huge numbers of what could be your target market. 

In a study by eMarketer of market share of social networking sites, the top four; MySpace (41.5%), Facebook (8.29%), YouTube (7.39%), and Craig’s List (2.81%), are great places to think about your market.  Both MySpace and Facebook are great locations to find Generation Y and X, so if you are marketing to that crowd, building a page in those sites may generate some positive traffic. 

YouTube is great to recycle any of your video, whether it is a commercial, how-to, training video, or just something fun.  The traffic on YouTube is so huge, you may have people find your video then find your site, in such a way that they would have never viewed your site in another manner. 

Craig’s list is a great place to get rid of extra products or used equipment.  Remember, people are looking for deals, so you may help you self get rid of junk and at the same time, build a new relationship that will help your business.

Many clients ask me if they should place advertising on their site to monetize it, and because it is so easy to add Google Adsense, many people think they should go ahead and just do it.

I would strongly discourage the addition of advertising to any corporate site. While you may need to monetize a magazine or community service type website, I believe that you should never place ads on a corporate site for two reasons.

1. You lose your viewers to your direct competitors. Imagine, going to a sales meeting and handing out your competitor’s business card at the end of the meeting. You would never do that in real life, do not do it on your website. If you understand how Google works, you’ll understand that they are good at what they do and if you write a page about a niche subject that your business provides, Google will place ads on that page with competitors that match your keywords.

2. You do not make enough money to justify the loss of customers. Google Ads can make you money, but not as much as you think. I make about $5.00 per 1000 page views on some of our websites, so it is fairly meager. I would guess that our average corporate client may get 2500 to 5000 page views a month, so you would make about $15 to $30. Would you sell your leads and customers to your competitor for that much?

Philosophies differ on what to do to build business if we are in a down economy. Some say this is precisely when ad budgets should go up, but historically when business is bad, media companies are the first to see a drop as ad budgets can be cut so easily.

The top 100 companies spent less in 2007 overall but increased their advertising over 40% online! It is very clear that online ad revenue will continue in a tough market, but where is overall advertising?

According to eMarketer and Universal McCann data, Total US media advertising spending was flat in 2007 but will increase 3.3% this year and 1.9% in 2009.

The “Microsite” is becoming recognized as a part of a website dedicated to a specific subject. It is a separate section or a separate website, sometimes with its own domain name.

A new concept developing over the last year or two, it is now the subject of more research. One such study among marketers finds that the Mircosite is being used as much as video in specialized pitches, product demos and other short term information. This is somewhat surprising as online video has been well excepted among both marketers and buyers.

RedFusion Media builds Microsites generally for specialized media and subject. Examples include online personalities that guide the user through filling a form, or making an online sales pitch. This is particularly effective as the video can be both the demonstrator and closer. Additional questions can be referred to a FAQ section, technical specifications section or any possible objection to the close.

Our experience shows increased completion of forms and signups for service. Microsites, while not really very different from the Website, may become another hot trend, in that it is a way to work on a specific subject in an intense way without effecting the general Website. Microsites can also be built by outside vendors for larger corporate Websites without engaging the webmaster for creative, a task that most marketers find compelling to get the product they envision.

See http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1006226&src=article1_newsltr for the full article.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project reported that nearly ALL teens in the US are online. . . and active in texting. (Writing for those of us over 22.)

Overall 94% are online, and if the income category under $30,000 in household income is eliminated, it is over 97%!

Responding teens were heavy users of electronic communications overall: 71% had a mobile phone, 59% had a notebook or desktop PC, 58% had a social network profile and 27% had a blog, according to information reported by Emarketer Newsletter.

While these facts are no real surprise to the market researcher or technophile, it deserves a hard look for those catering to teenage or young adult customers, because one possible result may be irrelevance of some businesses that don’t “get it.” Those that text, (they do not like to call it writing) may expect those that sell to them to text as well. Girls spend much more time texting and high-tech communicating than boys do. 44% of girls text every day, compared with only half as much for boys.

Don’t let your conclusion be that this group is great at writing though. In a recent seminar that I attended, Email expert Michelle Howe explained that in her college level business school writing class, most students completely clutch when asked to write a two paragraph email announcing a fictional policy change! See more on this subject in upcoming posts.

What is Social Media?

Social media is the new marketing idea to tie social groups together. The major driving force behind social media is the “user created content”. Users or members of the groups are the ones that create and push the direction of the website, not the owners of the site. The content is driven mostly by blogging or by message boards, where users can create and publish there strings of content. Users also get there own personal homepages, can add photos and plug-ins to their pages, and can link their pages to there friends. The major examples of sites that would be social community sites are; MySpace.com, FaceBook.com, Meetup.com, and UTube.

Can small and medium businesses use Social Media as a tool?

Sure, the most basic way to create a social community is to add a Blog to your existing website. Blogs are really a two way communication tool with the major advantage that Blogs have a powerful distributions system in the form of an RSS feed built in.

“Permission based” email is when a customer has asked for updates, product information and other direct contact from your company. This is a valuable tool which still has lots of power. First it is like direct mail except, of course, online. Second, these are interested parties and existing customers.

According to a new report by EMarker, Promotional emails perform well against other online forms of contact. They rank right under your website for importance as “most influence to buy online.”

Online marketing increasingly is more than the website. It is the most important, but in many ways it needs the other media to maximize its prospecting effect.

Read Online Marketing Effectiveness for more information about customer permission to sell.

With an astounding 42% revenue increase, Google stock surged over 17% in a single day following the announcement of huge 30% profit increases. The stock was down due to current market pressures and reports that the “click” rate was flat by ComSearch and other research firms.

Google reported that in fact clicks on its ads increased 20% in the first quarter from a year earlier and 30% in the forth quarter in a Wall Street Journal front page article today.

RedFusion Media has see the cost per click increase over the last several months, supporting the notion that demand for ads continues to increase. This was confirmed by Google’s Chief Executive Eric Schmidt in an interview with the Journal stating that on average advertisers are paying more for each click.
RedFusion Media buys online advertising for dozens of its clients and still sees lots of room for smaller businesses to take of advantage of small market niches in local areas. Even with prices rising, the effectiveness is still greater than most other options available to smaller companies and non-profits. Using our Local Target Marketing program, clients can see exactly what they spend and how many phone calls and emails are received as a result of the ad spend. If the cost goes too high it becomes apparent immediately, a measurement that other media simply can not do.