2014年1月9日星期四

Promotion, SEO, Traffic and Advertising

Promotion, SEO, Traffic and Advertising

  1. Optimizing a site for search engines
  2. Google Webmaster
  3. Tracking visitors to your site
  4. Adding Advertising
  5. Traffic Builder

Optimizing a site for search engines

Optimizing a site for search engines - Facebook Page publishing

Having a Facebook presence is crucial to your business's visibility, and can have a positive effect on your SEO strategy. Yola’s Facebook Page Publishing feature enables allows you to seamlessly integrate your website and publish it as a new tab on your Facebook Page. This new feature was designed fit perfectly with the new Facebook page timeline layout.

Once you've published your website to Facebook, your Facebook fans will be able to explore your Yola website, shop from their Yola Online Store, or complete a contact form, all without leaving Facebook. It also makes it easier to promote your site on Facebook because it's integrated into your page.
And, to make it easier to manage, each time you update your website, those changes will automatically be propagated to your Facebook page!

 Facebook Page Publishing is exclusively available to Yola Silver and Yola Gold subscribers.

How can I enable the Facebook Page publishing feature?

Once you have published your site, you can enable Facebook publishing using one of these two methods:
  1. Hover your mouse over the Publish button.
  2. Next to Facebook Publishing click on Configure.
  3. In the dialog box that opens, click on Connect with Facebook. You will be taken through the process, which includes a one-time sign-in to your Facebook account. This is done to allow the Sitebuilder to communicate with your page and publish to it.
  4. If you have more than one Facebook Page, select the Facebook Page you'd like to publish your site on.
  5. Click OK.
  6. Your Facebook Page will automatically be updated when you republish your Yola site.

What happens if I add my website to a second Facebook Page?

A Yola site can only be connected to one Facebook page. If you connect your site to a new Facebook page, the previous connection is broken and the tab on the first page won’t resolve. If you’d like to create tabs on multiple Facebook timelines, we suggest you create multiple Yola websites.

What happens if I don’t have a Facebook Page?

You can create a new Facebook page here.

What happens if I didn’t update my Facebook Page to the new timeline?

Yola’s facebook publishing will still work, but your page will have a horizontal scroll bar. You can update your Facebook pages to use the new timeline here.

Can I publish a different Yola website to Facebook rather than use my main site?

Yes! To do that, we suggest that you create a new website, and then publish that website to Facebook.

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Optimizing a site for search engines - Tutorial: Optimizing your site for local search

What is local search and why is it important?

If you are a business that depends on local customers, such as a flower shop, an auto body shop or a restaurant, what could be better than coming up right at the top of the search engine results page for a keyword search including your geographic location?

If part of your website's intent is to be relevant to local searchers, then optimizing your site for local search is a must!

Because local search results are now being placed very highly in the search engine results pages, the competition is steep and it's important to make sure your site is well optimized for local search.

A local search scenario:

Julia owns a flower shop in Toronto, Ontario that specializes in weddings. In general, all of Julia's customers are going to come from in and around Toronto. The shop is not going to be providing services to people in Miami, Florida! So it is important for Julia's website to reach searchers in and around Toronto looking for the services she provides.

How are local search results displayed?

A local search is a query that involves a keyword along with a geographic location. You probably do local searches all the time when looking for a business in your area. Looking back at Julia's flower shop in Toronto, Ontario a local search would be just that, "toronto ontario flower shop", or something similar.
You will see displayed in the graphic, next to the map, flower shops right in Toronto.

Optimizing your site for local search

It will just take a short amount of time to optimize your site for local search, and it is well worth it. Here are nine ways to get started:
1. Publish your site to a local domain name.
This is a great way to optimize your site for local search. A site with the .ca extension, which is local to Canada, will shout very loudly to the search engines that this business operates in Canada.

When it comes to local search, it is the search engines goal to provide the most relevant returns for local search queries. Yola is happy to provide some localized domain names such as .ca, .co.uk and .eu along with the standard .com, .net, .biz and .org. For more information on purchasing a domain name from Yola please see our tutorial: Purchasing a domain name from Yola.


2. Give your pages geo-specific, descriptive meta tags (title, description, keywords) including your zip/postal code.
This means that your meta tags should include the main keyword for your page as well as your location. Examples of a geo-targeted title tags would be:
  • Speciality Flower Shop - Toronto, Ontario 66777
  • Wedding Florist - Toronto, Ontario 66777
It's easy to add these tags to your Yola site. Click on Page > Page Properties > Metadata to access the fields to enter your tags. Here is a link to a tutorial with more detailed information on this topic: Adding title, description and keywords tags.


3. Make sure you have contact information, including your physical address and phone number, in text on every page of your site.
Remember, search engines read text, not graphics. An easy way to do this is to add a footer to each page of your site. You can do this by dragging a Text Widget to the bottom of your page and entering your contact details there.


4. Add your location to your image alt text.
If you have an image of your flower shop on your site, you could give it the image alt text "Julia's Flower Shop, Toronto, Ontario". Here is a link to more information on this: Adding alternative text to images.


5. Submit your site to Google's Local Business Center.
Here is a link with more information: Google Local Business Center.


6. Submit your site to Yahoo Local Listings.
Here is a link with more information: Yahoo Local Listings.


7. Submit your site to local directories.
Examples include Yellowpages.com, SuperPages.com, InfoSpace.com, InsiderPages.com, Local.com.


8. Send an email to local establishments.
For example, your Chamber of Commerce or another local business that compliments yours (a complementary local business for a flower shop might be a catering business), and request a link to your website from theirs, or to do a link exchange.


9. Look for blogs and forums that focus on your topic.
Making comments on blogs written by people in your area (good comments, not spam comments) is an excellent way to improve visibility. You can most of the time post a link back to your site.
These techniques for promoting your site locally are also good for your overall SEO! Please keep in mind that competition for local search is high, so just because you perform these techniques doesn't mean your site will automatically receive high placement for localized searches, but it will surely help!
For more information on search engine optimization please see our short SEO tutorial series which will take you through the process of planning to promoting your site with SEO in mind: Yola SEO Tutorial Series.  

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Optimizing a site for search engines - Adding a Facebook "Like" button

An excellent way to promote and share your website's content is with the Facebook Like button. You can add a Facebook Like button to any, and all, of your site's pages. When a visitor clicks on the button, a story appears in their friends' News Feed, with a link back to your website, or page.

The Facebook Like button lets your visitors share content from your site with their friends, even when they're not on their Facebook page. Content that is shared and recommended between friends on social networks is generally more relevant than content recommended by strangers.

Here's how to add one to your site:
  1. The Facebook Like Widget is located in Widgets > More > Social. Drag and drop it onto your page.
  2. Click Edit on the top-left corner of the widget, and you will see the following editing options:
    • Margin: This is the spacing around the widget.
    • Alignment: You can align the widget to the left, to the center, or to the right.
    • URL to Like: This defaults to the page you add the widget to, and you can change this URL to another page of your site.
    • Layout style: You can choose how the number of likes your page has had is displayed.
    • Width: The width of the widget, in pixels.
    • Show faces: You can select whether to show the profile picture of the visitors who have liked your page.
    • Font: You can choose the font of your "Like" button - there are six options to choose from.
    • Color Scheme: Choose the color of the like count and button.
  3. When you're finished setting up your button, click Save.
  4. Save your site, and then click on Publish to make your changes live.
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Optimizing a site for search engines - Getting your site indexed by the search engines

It takes time for new sites to be crawled and indexed by search engines, and before people will be able to find your site using the search engine's search box, this will first need to happen. This can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months and unfortunately, is out of our control.

Until your site is indexed, people will be able to find your site by putting your address, such as mysite.com, into the browser window at the very top of the page.

We've made managing your SEO easy with our Yola Gold package. Yola Gold includes Traffic Builder - an SEO performance management tool. These tools are a formidable combination that will help you get your site noticed by the right customers, and help you manage your site's SEO compliance and keyword effectiveness.

There are some other things that you can do to move the process of getting indexed along:
  • Search engines like Google show users the sites that they think the users will find useful. The most important things you can do to ensure your site will be indexed is to create good, informative content and update your site frequently.
  • Search engines read text to know the topic of a page and there are three tags that specifically alert the search engine to what a page is about; the title, description and keywords tag. Yola provides an area to edit these tags. If you click on Page > Page Properties > Metadata, you will find fields to add unique title, description, and keywords tags to each of your pages. For more information on this please see this tutorial: Adding title, description and keywords tags. Traffic Builder includes an SEO scan, that quickly picks up on missing tags and pinpoints the work that needs to be done to fix them.
  • Submitting your site to search engines. This basically alerts the search engines to your site's existence and puts it on a list of sites to be crawled; this of course is no guarantee of inclusion in the search engines index, but is quick to do and could speed the process along. We help you along with this by automatically submitting your site for you, but you're welcome to submit your site manually. Here are links to submit your site to be crawled to the three major search engines: Google, Bing and Yahoo.
  • You can submit your site to Google through a program called Google Webmaster Tools. We have posted a tutorial that walks you through the steps to do so here.
  • Search engines view sites that have many incoming links (links from other websites) as being more of an authority on a topic. Begin building links to your site by:
  • Submitting your website to online directories. Submitting your website to business directories and niche topic directories is a great idea for driving traffic to your site and improving your SEO.
  • Submitting informative articles to article directories. When you do this you will be able to put an author bio at the end of the article with a link back to your website, and by putting the article in the article directory you give others permission to reprint your article as long as they include your author bio; this will in turn give you more links back to your site and traffic. Here are a few to get you started: ideamarketers.com, ezinearticles.com and articlealley.com.
  • Optimizing your site for local search. If you are a business that depends on local customers, such as a flower shop, an auto body shop or a restaurant, what could be better than coming up right at the top of the search engine results page for a keyword search including your geographic location? We have a great tutorial that will step you through getting started: Optimizing your site for local search.
  • Network with other webmasters in your industry, topic of interest and local area and offer to do a link exchange.
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Optimizing a site for search engines - Planning your site with SEO in mind

Choosing Keywords, Creating a Site Plan & Domain Names


1. What are keywords?

Keywords are the words and phrases that Internet users type into the search box to find what they are looking for. It's important to study your topic, and do keyword research before choosing keywords to target on your site pages.

2. Why are keywords important?

Keywords are important for search engine optimization because if you want to get traffic to your site from the search engines, you need to have the most relevant ones appear in your pages.

3. What is keyword research and how does it affect SEO?

Keyword research is evaluating your website's topic and finding out exactly what Internet users are searching for in order to find what you have to offer. Keyword research is important for a variety of reasons. You want to find out:
  • What keywords Internet searchers are using that relate to what you have to offer.
  • How popular various keywords are.
  • How competitive various keywords are.

4. Keyword research and choosing keywords

Keyword research tools will give you insightful information on words and phrases that people are using to find what your website provides. You will find average search volume, competitiveness and more. The search engines have a huge job! Can you imagine sifting through millions of webpages and finding the very best one for the search phrase "how to grill chicken"? But that's what they do; that's why you use them! A big part of search engine optimization lies in discovering what words and phrases searchers are using to find what you provide... and then delivering the best information to those searchers. It isn't a mystery and it isn't a quick process. It takes research, time and dedication. The search engines want to display the best information... so become the best information provider! Take your time researching and put some thought into choosing keywords to target on your site pages.

5. Creating a site plan

It's important to have a plan of action before you start to build your site. If you have done some keyword research and have a list of keywords that you would like to have your site show up when a user types those keywords into the search engines, then plan your site pages to include those topics and keywords.
Example: You have a website all about organic chocolate and its health benefits and you have decided that you would like to target:
  • Chocolate truffles
  • Organic chocolate
  • Organic dark chocolate
  • Health benefits of chocolate
  • Lose weight eating chocolate
  • Healthy chocolate recipes
Then plan to have an individual page that will specifically target each of those keywords. More about writing your content and building your site around your keywords in the next tutorial, Building Your Site With SEO in Mind.

6. Choosing a domain name, things to consider:

Choosing a domain name is very important and should be considered carefully. When choosing a domain name with SEO in mind you should:
  • Consider the length of the domain name you choose. Will people be able to remember it or easily type it in when searching for your website?
  • Consider using your business name for your URL (domain name) as long as your business name isn't Schufengachemigen Inc., who could ever remember schufengachemigen.com? If your business name has been taken by another website consider part of your business name plus a general keyword that describes what you offer.
  • Consider using a general keyword plus another word tacked onto the end.
  • Consider very carefully the use of multiple hyphens in a domain name and avoid if possible. Hyphenating keywords in a domain name such as travel-south-america-easy-free.com does not promote credibility, appears spam-like and is difficult to type.

7. Owning your own domain name

To maximize traffic to your site, consider investing in your own domain name. A shorter web address makes it easier for your visitors to remember and spell, and stands out more in the search engine results. Your site will appear more professional, and some SEO research suggests that sites with their own domain rank better than sites published to subdomains.
Note that buying a domain does not guarantee a certain search engine ranking and all the tips in this series should still be done to enhance your SEO.
To buy a domain from Yola, click on the "Publish" button in the Sitebuilder, and choose a domain name and hosting package. 

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Optimizing a site for search engines - SEO: Promoting your Site

Key points to get started:

  • Advertising with Google AdWords
  • Local online directory services
  • Social networks
  • Content generation

What is site promotion?

Site promotion should always form part of your SEO strategy, and it’s a logical follow-on from all the hard work you’ve done to make your site perform well in the search engines. For example, site promotion can help improve your search engine ranking and get your site indexed faster. Many aspects of site promotion happen off-site - think of it like handing out your business card at a networking function.

What do I need to do?

We’ve made sure that getting started is easy, and provide you with all the tools you need. From adding keywords, to setting up Google Analytics - you can do it all from the Sitebuilder.

Why do I need to promote my site?

Promoting your site is the best and easiest way to increase traffic. Think of site promotion as advertising your business and services - but cheaper (if not free!). Site promotion is part of SEO and includes using keywords that are picked up by search engines to enable people to find you, using social networks to gain fans, and listing your site on local directories.
The internet has a much wider reach than traditional advertising, and even better is that measuring your success is much easier. There are many channels and methods available to you, so take the plunge and get noticed!

How do I get started?

Here are some popular ways to get noticed by the search engines, and potential customers:
  • Use Google AdWords. With Google AdWords, you can target your advertising using your keywords, and only pay for it when people click on your link. Yola makes this easy for you, by providing AdWords credits as part of our Yola Bronze, Yola Silver and Yola Gold packages. Read more about Google AdWords.
  • Submit your website to search engines.
  • Submit your site to online and local directories.
  • Off-page optimization.
  • Consistently generate new content.
  • Linking.
  • Keywords.
  • Headers.
  • Promote your site via social networks.
Promoting your site has a lot to do with off-page search engine optimization strategies. These strategies will develop backlinks to your website as well as increase traffic and your authority in your topic area.
Here are a few to consider:

1. Use Google AdWords

Google AdWords is one of the most popular ways to advertise on the internet. Because it works on a Pay-per-click model, it’s ideal if you’re just starting out or you simply want to have a very focused advertising target market. We offer an AdWords voucher as part of our Yola Bronze, Yola Silver and Yola Gold subscriptions. Take a look at our Pricing page for more information about this.

2. Submit your website to the three major search engines

To get you started, we publish your sitemap by default when you publish your site, letting search engines easily know what has changed without them having to crawl every page.
Submitting your site to a search engine does not mean you will be automatically included in the search engine's index. By doing this you alert the search engine to your website's presence and are added to a list of sites to be crawled. XML sitemaps make it easier for search engine crawlers to see the depth of your website and keep track of things changing like new pages being added and deleted.
Of course, you can also submit your sitemap manually. Here are links to submit your site to Google, Yahoo and Bing: Yola Gold's SEO performance management tool, Traffic Builder, is designed to help you submit, refine and manage your site's performance. Take a look at the Traffic Builder FAQ for more information.


3. Consistently add more content

Building up more content on your site is an extremely important part of search engine optimization. When you add more content to your site you are:
  • Providing visitors to your site a great reason to come back.
  • Giving search engines a reason to visit your site often. Search engines want to keep the most updated version of sites in their index and they also want to consistently add new and improved information to it as well.
  • Adding to the searchablility of your site. The more pages your site has in the search engine's index, the more possibilities your site has of being found for keywords searches.
The type of content you add to your site is up to you. You can add a blog to your site, run promotions, upload images and more. Publishing your site to your Facebook Page is also a great way to increase your visibility and attract more visitors. Take a look at our tutorial about Facebook Page publishing.


4. Get involved in social networking

A great way to develop a following for your website is to get involved in the social networking arena. Becoming active on social networking sites will bring traffic to your site as well as develop back links. The goal of this is to get social with others on the web while promoting your site at the same time.
There are many more options including niche focused social networking sites to get involved in. Take a look at this article for more about niche social networking.

 We love it when you tell the world about your site! So we've added some easy ways to do this after you've published your site.
When you click on the "Publish" button and publish your site, you will be able to click on the Facebook and Twitter social networking buttons on the confirmation screen and post your update to your preferred social network.



You can also add social networking widgets, such as the "Share", "Tweet This" and Facebook "Like" button, to your website. These offer an easy way for visitors to your site to share content quickly and easily.

Take a look at these tutorials for more information:


5. Verify your site with Google Webmaster Tools and submit a sitemap

Google Webmaster is a powerful tool that allows you to manage you We have an excellent tutorial that will step you through this process. Please see our Google Webmaster Tutorial for instructions on verifying your site and submitting a sitemap.


6. Do link exchanges

Link building is an extremely important part of SEO. The search engines will look at the amount of links that come into your site as well as the status of the sites that link to you (the amount of traffic those sites get). Although the search engines look more favorably on links that are not reciprocal, exchanging links is a great place to start!
  • Find other websites that have the same topic as your site and send an email to the webmaster asking if he or she would like to do a link exchange.
  • Ask local organizations such as your Chamber of Commerce or Visitor's Bureau if a link exchange could be done. Ask your friends, family members and social networking contacts if they would like to exchange links.


7. Write a blog

Blogging is an exceptional way to consistently add new content to your site! We recommend taking a look at Tumblr. It's a great way to get started and once you've set up your blog you can add it to your site using the Tumblr Widget in the Sitebuilder. Read this tutorial for more information: Using the Tumblr Widget.

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Optimizing a site for search engines - Tutorial: Getting started with Pinterest

Linking your Pinterest boards to your Yola site is a great way to get traffic to your website. Not only is it fun to share your favorite products, projects and inspirations and engage with your audience, but you can also add buttons to your Online Store which may help increase your sales. If you are not using the Online Store Widget yet, check it out here: Online Store.

Adding a “Follow Me” button

Here's how to add your Pinterest follow button to your site using the HTML Code Widget:
  1. In your Sitebuilder, drag and drop the HTML Code Widget (located in Widgets > Popular) onto your page.
  2. Write or paste your code (use right-click > paste or Ctrl-V to paste) into the HTML Editor.
  3. When you are done, click "Save".
Here's how to add your Pinterest follow button to your site using the Text Widget:
  1. Click on the "HTML" button on the Text Editing Toolbar.
  2. Write or paste your code (use right-click > paste or Ctrl-V to paste) into the HTML Editor.
  3. When you are finished, click "OK" to return to editing text.
If you are editing a blog post, you can insert your Pinterest follow button using the HTML button on the blog's Text Editing Toolbar (this works the same as a Text Widget).

Adding a “Pin It” button

If you would like to add a "Pin It" button to your site, you can do so as follows:
  1. Go to this page and set up your embed code: http://pinterest.com/about/goodies.
  2. Copy the code provided.
  3. Drag and drop the HTML Code Widget onto your page.
  4. Paste the code into the HTML Editor.
  5. Click "Save"
Your "Pin It" button will be displayed on your site.

Verify your domain

If you have a Yola Silver or Yola Gold subscription it is possible to verify your domain on Pinterest. This means that that your website shows the full URL on your profile and in search results. You can read more about it on the Pinterest Blog.
Follow the steps below to verify your domain on Pinterest:
  1. Log in to your Pinterest account.
  2. Change the URL to your account name e.g., http://www.pinterest.com/yola (replace "yola" with your login name).
  3. Click on the pen icon in the bottom-right corner of the banner (located at the top of the page).
  4. The "Edit Profile" screen will open up.
  5. Enter your Yola site's URL next to "Website" as: http://www.yourdomain.com (replace "yourdomain" with your domain name").
  6. Click on "Verify Website".
  7. Click on the "Verify with a meta tag" link. This will display a meta tag which will look something like this: <meta name="p:domain_verify" content="9eb763b8a48d92e1e0386b355c220efc" />
  8. Copy the meta tag.
  9. Back on your Yola site, click on Site > Tracking > Site Tracking Code.
  10. Paste the code into the "Header Code" pane on the right-hand side of the screen.
  11. Republish your Yola site.
  12. In your Pinterest account, you will see a checkmark next to your Yola site's URL to indicate that it is a verified website.
Please note: Only top-level domains such as yourdomain.com can be verified. If you are using a Yola subdomain (e.g., sitename.yolasite.com) you will not be able to verify it on Pinterest. Yola Bronze and Yola Free accounts do not have access to the Site Tracking Code feature.

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Optimizing a site for search engines - Building your site with SEO in mind

Creating search engine friendly website content

The bulk of what a search engine can see in a website is its written content (as opposed to images etc.). If you want the search engines to like your site, and send you visitors, your site has to have a good deal of written content.

Keeping pages topic focused

When you start to develop a page for your website consider the page's main focus and take a look at your list of keywords - what keyword(s) best describes what's on that page?
There are some areas of a web page that are important and will "call out" to the search engines what the main topic of the page is. A good plan when creating a page is to keep it topic focused by integrating your keywords into different places such as the:
  • Page Title
  • Description
  • Keywords
  • Headers
  • Special formatting such as bolding or italicizing
  • Throughout the written content
  • In text links


Writing title, description and keywords tags

Each of these meta tags; title, description and keywords tags, can be added to your site by clicking on Page > Page Properties > Metadata.
  • The area labeled Page Title is where you put your title tag. Your page title tag should include the main keyword or concept of your page, your business or website name and, if relevant, your location and should be under 70 characters long. Here's a basic example:
Fine Gold Jewelry | ABC Jewel Company | My Town, Texas
  • The area labeled Description is where you put your description tag. Your description tag should include the main keywords for the page and the name of your company and, if relevant, the location. It should be under 200 characters long and should entice visitors to click through to your site. Here's a basic example:
ABC Jewel Company provides customers in and around My Town, Texas with the finest yellow and white gold jewelry imported directly from Italy. Stop in today!
  • The area labeled Keywords is where you will put in the main keywords for the page. Don't stuff keywords, only list keywords that apply to the content of the page. Here is a basic example:
fine gold jewelry, gold jewelry, white gold jewelry, ABC Jewel Company, My Town Texas, TX

Metadata


Incorporating keywords into content

When you write page content, the keywords should blend in naturally - don't overdo the usage of keywords, or the search engines will ignore the pages. Internet content should be easy for the reader to scan or read through. You can create this effect with:
  • Short paragraphs.
  • Logical page breaks utilizing headings and subheadings.
  • Bullet pointed and numbered lists.
  • Bolding or italicizing (more useful for search engine optimization than optimum readership, don't overdo).
  • Creating keyword rich text links.
Here is a short example using ABC Jewel Company's webpage about fine gold jewelry. Note where the keyword "fine gold jewelry" is used.
Experience Fine Gold Jewelry
Gold jewelry never goes out of style, and for good reason. Fine gold jewelry has adorned the bodies of royalty to everyday people for centuries. Buying gold jewelry can be a rich experience. Are you looking for the kind that you don't find at the local jewelry store? ABC Jewel Company specializes in the kind of premium gold that marks a special occasion for life.
What to keep in mind when purchasing fine gold jewelry:
  • What type of wear and tear will the jewelry be facing?
  • Does the wearer have a preference between white and yellow gold?
  • What is your price range?
Learn more about the various specifics of fine gold jewelry here on our site. We're passionate about gold and want to share that passion with you.


Giving images alternative text

Search engines cannot "see" graphics, they read text. You can help the search engines "see" the topic of your graphics by giving them something called an "alternate attribute" or "alternate text".
If you added the picture using the Picture Widget, you can add alt text as follows:
  1. Click on the Picture Widget in your page
  2. Click on "Edit" at the top of your Picture Widget.
  3. Under "Alternative Text", enter your description in the box provided.
  4. Click "Save" to add the description to your image.
Alt Text

You can add alt text for pictures added with the Text Widget but to do this you will need to edit the HTML:
  1. Click the "HTML" button at the end of the Text Editing Toolbar.
  2. The HTML Editor willl open up with the HTML codes for your Text Widget. Look for the code for your image. It will start with <image scr = "
  3. Edit the code so that it looks like this: <img src="filename.gif" alt="Alternative description goes here">
  4. Add your alt text in place of the portion between the quotes in bold. When you are done, click "Save".
Your pictures will then have an alt attribute.

Creating search engine friendly hyperlinks

Search engines follow text links through a site and they also note what text is used. Putting your keyword into a text link further enhances the keywords relevance on your page. To create a keyword rich text link in Yola:
  1. Highlight the words you want to be the link.
  2. Click on the "Insert Link" icon in the Text Editing Toolbar.
  3. Choose where you will be linking to.
  4. Click "OK".
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Optimizing a site for search engines - Adding title, description and keywords tags

Search engines read text to know the topic of a page and there are three tags that specifically alert the search engine to what a page is about: Title, description and keywords. Yola provides an area to edit these tags. To access this area click on Page > Page Properties > Metadata.

The area labeled Page Title is where you put your title tag. This should include the main keyword or concept of your page, your business or website name and, if relevant, your location. Your page title should also be under 70 characters long. Here's a basic example:

Fine Gold Jewelry | ABC Jewel Company | My Town, Texas

The area labeled Description is where you put your description tag. This should include your main keywords for the page, or variations of your keywords, as well as the name of your company and, if relevant, your location. Your description should be under 200 characters long and is meant to entice users to click through to your site. Here's a basic example:

ABC Jewel Company provides customers in and around My Town, Texas with the finest yellow and white gold jewelry imported directly from Italy. Stop in today!

The area labeled Keywords is where you put in the main keywords for the page. Don't stuff keywords - only list keywords that apply to the content of the page. Here's a basic example:

fine gold jewelry, gold jewelry, white gold jewelry, ABC Jewel Company, My Town Texas, TX

It is important to remember that just adding keywords to the Keywords field is not enough. You also need to ensure that you blend your keywords into the content on the relevant page. Again, don't stuff them in - blend them in casually making sure to keep the flow of your content.


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Optimizing a site for search engines - How can I access the head section to add my meta tags?

In Yola you don't have access to the head section of the page to add meta tags, but we have made it possible for you to add these tags by clicking on Page > Metadata.

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Optimizing a site for search engines - Tutorial: Adding the Google +1 button

The Google +1 button lets people who love your content recommend it on Google search, and helps people discover relevant content—such as your website—from the people they already know and trust. The +1 button appears on Google search, on websites, and on ads. For example, you might see a +1 button for a Google search result, Google ad, or next to an article you're reading on your favorite news site.


Adding the +1 button to pages on your Yola site lets visitors recommend your content, knowing that their friends and contacts will see their recommendation when it’s most relevant—in the context of Google search results. Content recommended by friends and family is generally more relevant than content from strangers. For example, your friends may have the same taste in music as you do, have their finger on the social pulse, or know where the best shopping bargains are to be had - and so you'll visit websites that they +1.

For more information about +1, and how it improves your SEO, visit: http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/.

Here's how to add the Google +1 button to your Yola site:
  1. Click on Widgets > More > Social and drag and drop the Google +1 Widget onto your page.
  2. Click "Edit" on the top-left corner of the widget to edit the layout, margin, alignment and language of the button. You can also choose whether to display the number of people who have clicked the button, as well as the URL of the +1.
  3. When you are finished, click "Save".
  4. Save your site, and then click on "Publish" to make your changes live.
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Optimizing a site for search engines - Promoting your site: Adding the Tweet This Widget

An excellent way to promote and drive traffic to your site is to add a Tweet This Widget. This widget allows visitors to your site to easily share content from your site directly to their Twitter feed - without having to leave your site!


Here's how to add the Tweet This Widget to your site:
  1. The Tweet This Widget is located in Widgets > More > Social. Drag and drop it onto your page.
  2. Click "Edit" on the top-left corner of the widget, and you will see the following editing options:
    • Button: In this menu, you can edit the layout, change the margin and change the alignment of the widget.
    • Tweet Text: This is the text that will be included in your visitor's tweet when they share content from your website.
    • URL: This is the URL of the page you'd like to share. You can type in the URL of your site, or you can type in the URL of a specific page. Alternatively, you can set it to "Automatic", and the widget will use the URL for the page it's on.
    • Language: You can choose the language that you'd like the Tweet This icon to display in on your site.
    • Recommendations: If you want to share your favorite Twitter accounts with your visitors, you can recommend up to two. These will display after they've shared content from your site.
  3. When you're finished setting up your button, click "Save".
  4. Save your site, and then click "Publish" to make your changes live.
For some other excellent suggestions on how to promote and drive more traffic to your site, take a look at this tutorial: Promoting your site.

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Optimizing a site for search engines - Using the "Share Me" Widget

An excellent way to promote and share your website's content is via social networking. Social networking buttons such as "tweet", "Like" and "+1" are an easy way to get more traffic to your site.


By clicking on a social networking button, users add your site to their Twitter, Facebook or Google+ feed. Adding the social networking buttons to pages on your Yola site lets visitors recommend your content, knowing that their friends and contacts will see their recommendation. All this, without having to leave your site!

The Widgets > Social tab in the Sitebuilder has a handy "Share Me" widget that allows you to add all three social networking to your site quickly and easily. Because all the buttons are together, you don't have to worry about aligning and positioning them. You also don't need to configure it - simply drag and drop the widget to the desired place on your page, save and publish your site! When a visitor clicks on a button, they will be prompted to log into their social networking account and a story appears in their feed, with a link back to your website, or page.

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Optimizing a site for search engines - Getting listed for keyword searches

It is the goal of many webmasters to get listed for various keyword searches. Before you decide on specific keywords you would like your website to list for, make sure you take into consideration what the competition is, as well as how much work you are able to do to make it happen.

What are keywords?

Keywords are relevant words used by someone when they are searching for information on the web. Keywords describe what is being searched for and this allows the search engine to check its database and return results matching the words submitted. If a site does not include keywords, it decreases its chance of being found via a keyword search.

Adding keywords to your site also describes your business and website to your customers and search engines. Using relevant keywords (that match what people would be searching for) improves your chances of coming up in related searches.
There are millions of websites on the Internet which makes some keyword phrases more competitive than others. There is a huge amount of competition for the keyword "cars", whereas the keyword phrase "used Saturn car sales Austin Texas" carries far less competition. Many companies will enlist the services of specialists to help them in the pursuit of more competitive keywords and search engine optimization in general.
One thing you can do to check the competition for a keyword is to use a free keyword research tool such as Wordtracker. When you enter your keyword and click "Hit Me" you will see the top 100 searches including that keyword, and the approximate number of searches per day.
If you do some research and find keywords or phrases you would like to try to list for in the search engines, here are a few strategies to get started:
  1. Only focus on one or two keywords on each page of your website.
  2. Write keyword rich title, description, and keywords tags for each page of your site. If you click on Page > Page Properties > Metadata you will find fields to add unique tags to each page of your site. Please see the related links for more information on this topic.
  3. Write good content and make sure the keyword/s are in the visible text on the page. Don't stuff the keywords into the page, blend them in so your page reads comfortably.
  4. If your business is local to a geographic area, make sure to mention your location in various places throughout your website.
As always, there is never any guarantee that a website will list for specific keyword searches; but these suggestions will give you a place to start.

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Optimizing a site for search engines - Mobile publishing

Mobile Publishing is designed to help your customers find you from anywhere, anytime.

Exclusively for Yola Silver and Yola Gold subscribers, this functionality allows you to optimize your Yola site and publish it specifically for viewing on mobile smartphones. The mobile template includes prominent calls to action, such as click-to-call and maps, and elegantly tailors your website's look and feel for the mobile browsing experience. It is also integrated with the Yola Online Store, allowing your customers to transact directly from their mobile phones.
Here are some of the features available:
  • You can change your header's background color and font, to differentiate it from your non-mobile-optimized site.
  • One-touch buttons:
    • You can add a button for customers to call you instantly, without having to scroll through your site.
    • You can add a "Map" button to display a map to your business, making it easier for customers to find you.
    • You can choose whether to display your site's banner image on your mobile-optimized site.
Updating your site automatically updates your mobile site without you having to worry about it, allowing you to focus on running your business.
To access Mobile Publishing, go to Site > Publishing > Mobile. The dialog box contains a preview version of your site, so you can see what it will look like on a mobile phone.

 Please note: Your site might display slightly differently on some phones due to different resolutions and screen sizes.
  1. To enable Mobile Publishing, click on "Enable" in the top right corner of the Mobile Publishing settings box.
  2. Click "Save" to save your changes.
  3. To publish your browser and mobile-optimized site, click "Publish".
  4. Both versions of your site will be published.
Once you have enabled mobile publishing, the mobile version of your site will automatically be updated every time you republish your site. 

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Optimizing a site for search engines - Introduction to SEO

What is SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?

Search engine optimization is a crucial part of creating a successful presence on the internet.

But what is SEO? It's a bit of science and marketing mingled together! It's the practice of improving where your site appears when people perform searches, and uses techniques that are both "on page (within the pages of the site) and off page (outside the pages of the site) in order to increase the traffic a site receives from the search engines. An example of an on page technique would be adding keywords to your pages, and an example of an off page technique would be exchanging links with another website. We will discuss these techniques in more depth later.
It's very important to note with search engine optimization that pleasing your site visitor and providing a good user experience will often also lead to good results with the search engine. It is the search engine's goal to provide the best results to Internet users - make this your goal as well!

We are passionate about helping you make an impact with your website, and that includes giving you a hand with SEO. Here are some of the benefits that we provide to all our users:
  • Search engine compatible XML site maps. XML sitemaps make it easier for search engine crawlers to see the depth of your website and keep track of things changing like new pages being added and deleted. By publishing your sitemap by default, we let search engines easily know what has changes without them having to crawl every page.
  • Page title are H1 tag by default. As search engines crawl websites they rate the importance of content based on the HTML tags they are under. As the H1 is the most important tag, your title becomes the most important piece of content on the page.
  • Alt tag options for all images. When search engines look at content they index images based on their alt tags. Website with images that have alt tags appear more content rich and rank higher.
  • Low load time. One of the things that affects SEO is the load time for a website. A website with low load times will rank higher than one with high load times.
  • Images are optimized and have dimensions parameters. To improve the load time of your website we optimize your images for web by default. If you need your images to appear in their original format you can turn optimization off.
  • Meta descriptions tags adding for each individual page. Adding meta descriptions that match the content of your website helps the SEO ranking of your website.
  • Nested navigation. Nested navigation allows your to silo content based on subcategories that will improve the breadth of keywords you site. Nested navigation also reduces the amount of links on a page which also improves SEO.
  • Adding hyphens between blank words in page names. Compared to underscores or percentage signs, hyphenated page names have a higher SEO ranking.
  • Ease of updating. Pages that are frequently updated rank higher in SEO that pages and sites that have not been updated in a long time and appear less relevant to search engines. We pride ourselves on providing the ability to make changes quickly and easily.
  • All content is HTML and indexable (as opposed to Flash-based sites or Javascript-initialized content). This means that all your content is easily found by search engines.
  • Allowing you to name pages with keywords (as opposed to using internal page identifiers). Search engines look at the page name when they rank a website on certain keywords. Having the name of the page the same with the keywords your are trying to rank higher on helps you rank higher.


Measuring your SEO success

The most important part of getting started with SEO is being able to manage your site's performance and see where you can improve. SEO is a constant process, and Yola offers an SEO performance-management tool, Traffic Builder, built into our Premium Yola Gold package.

Traffic Builder's dashboard provides at-a-glance insight into your keyword and search engine rankings. Also included is an integrated scan, that scans your site and highlights any problem areas.

Take a look at the Traffic Builder FAQ for more information.


Why is SEO important?

To better understand what SEO is, you need to understand why it is important. Any website that needs traffic to survive needs search engine optimization. There are millions of webpages on the internet, and it is the search engines job to add all of those pages to its index and whenever a query is performed find the very best webpages to display to the searcher.
There are many, many factors that the search engines take into account when choosing which webpages to display in what order in the search results. They look at factors such as the amount and quality of links coming into a site which is considered extremely important, and the site tags and page content. Performing various search engine optimization techniques on your site will help your site get noticed by the search engines and give them reasons to send searchers to you.


What is a search engine?

Search engines provide internet users with a way to find information in an organized fashion. A search engine uses special software called an algorithm or spider to go through the entire web and add pages to its index. These engines are used by millions of people every day, and it is up to the search engines to provide the people who use their service with the best information possible. When you do a search the search engine will pull the most relevant web pages from their index to show you.
The three major search engines are Google, Yahoo and Bing, although there are various smaller engines.


What is indexing?

Indexing is an important part of having a presence on the web, but what does it mean to be indexed?

Search engines have extremely large indexes which hold a copy of all of the webpages they have crawled and chosen to add to their index. The search engine spider crawls through the web, following links, and when it finds a page to add, it will make a copy of it, and add it to its index. When this has happened to your site, you can consider it as having been "indexed".

This can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months for a site to be indexed, and the process must take place for every new website. Your site will only show up in search results after it has been indexed.
To find out whether your site has been indexed, go to Google and in the search box type "site: mysite.com" (substituting your website for mysite.com). This will give you a list of your website pages that are in the index. If there are no results, the indexing has not happened yet. You can do this same search at Yahoo and MSN.


What's search engine ranking, and how do search engines rank pages?

Search engine ranking refers to where a website or page appears in the search engine results page.

Each search engine and directory has its own ranking and listing criteria. Generally, search engines use proprietary ranking algorithms to determine the quality and relevance of a web page to decide whether or not to add the page to its index. The exact criteria used are a closely-guarded trade secret. This is to ensure that no one can "hack" the system and engage in unfair SEO practice.

When calculating page rankings, search engines focus on copy, Title tags, keyword usage, and the amount and relevance of inbound hyperlinks all contribute to your search engine ranking.

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Optimizing a site for search engines - Why can't I Google my site?

Before internet users will be able to find your site using the search box, your site will first need to be indexed by the search engines.

Indexing is the process of the search engine algorithm going through each of your website pages, making a copy of the page, and adding it to its index. It takes time for new sites to be picked up and indexed by the search engines and can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months and is out of our control.
This is a complex process of sorting through the millions of new sites published every day, figuring out what they are about, indexing and ranking them in order of importance so that the right ones come up at the right time. If you take a moment to imagine the millions of webpages on the internet you can see why this can take some time.

 As a new site owner you get to take part in this, using the excellent tools Yola has available to make you successful! You can learn more about what you can do to get your site indexed quickly here: Promotion, SEO, Traffic and Advertising.
Although it takes time for newly published sites to get indexed by the search engines, there is more than one way to get around the internet!

 If you or your visitor clicks on a link to your site, or types the URL directly into the address bar of their browser, they will be able to access your site. So, as soon as you start sharing your URL with people, you can start sending traffic to your site right from the first day! It is really live on the internet for all the world to see, even though the search engines are still learning about it.

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Optimizing a site for search engines - What is the difference between the address bar and the search box?
There are two different places to search from when you open up a web browser; there is the address bar and the search bar.

The address bar is at the very top of the page and can be used if you know the exact address of the site you want to go to. To use it, type the address of the site, using the http:// is not necessary. The address bar must be used to search for a site if the site has not yet been indexed. This is the address bar:

The search bar is used when you either don't know the exact address of a site you are looking for, or when you would like to find multiple sites on a single topic. When you use the search box you will be given a list of websites that the search engine feels best meets the criteria of your search. This is the search box:

For more information on getting your site indexed with Google please take a look at our SEO tutorial: Promoting Your Site.

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Optimizing a site for search engines - Custom Domain - will it help with SEO?

Having the right domain name is very important and should be considered carefully.

When choosing a domain name with SEO in mind you should:
  • Consider the length of the domain name you choose. Will people be able to remember it or easily type it in when searching for your website?
  • Consider using your business name for your URL (domain name) as long as your business name isn't Schufengachemigen Inc., who could ever remember schufengachemigen.com? If your business name has been taken by another website consider part of your business name plus a general keyword that describes what you offer.
  • Consider using a general keyword plus another word tacked onto the end.
  • Consider very carefully the use of multiple hyphens in a domain name and avoid if possible. Hyphenating keywords in a domain name such as travel-south-america-easy-free.com does not promote credibility, appears spam like and is difficult to type.
  • To maximize traffic to your site, you should consider investing in your own custom domain name. A shorter web address makes it easier for your visitors to remember and spell, and stands out more in the search engine results. Your site will appear more professional, and some SEO research suggests that sites with their own domain rank better than sites published to subdomains.
Note that buying a domain does not guarantee a certain search engine ranking and all the tips in this series should still be done to enhance your SEO.

If you're ready to purchase a custom domain name from Yola: Buy a domain name from Yola!


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Google Webmaster

Google Webmaster - Why is Google Webmaster not Verifying?

If you are having trouble getting your site to verify with Google Webmaster there are a few reasons why this could be happening.

  1. Make sure that you have entered the proper code into the Google Webmaster field located under Site > Tracking > Google Webmaster. You only need to enter the text that is between the " " and nothing else; it will look something like this: XlBMeWkrAxWIJtD5n3C3N8Zv09QKKl3R1MaoZnssKA0
  2. Make sure you clicked "Publish" after you entered the code. This will apply the change to your site so Google can crawl it.
  3. If you have done both of these things and are still not able to verify your site, you may have entered your URL incorrectly. We recommend that you go back through the tutorial and redo the steps to make sure each part was done properly. Here is a link to the tutorial: Google Webmaster Tutorial.

Google Webmaster -  I can't upload an HTML file, how do I verify my site with Google Webmaster?

To verify your site with Google Webmaster you need to use the meta tag option. It is very important that you copy the correct portion of the tag in order to be successful. Copy only the letter/number string between the quotation marks, then click Site > Tracking > Google Webmaster. Paste the code into the designated field, and then click on the "x" in the top-right corner to save the change.

For detailed, step-by-step, instructions on how to verify your site with Google Webmaster and submit a sitemap, please see our Google Webmaster Tutorial.
Please use our instructions and not Google's. Google's are written on the assumption that you are coding the website from scratch. Our instructions are written to work specifically with Yola.


Google Webmaster - I can't upload an HTML file, how do I verify my site with Google Webmaster?


To verify your site with Google Webmaster you need to use the meta tag option. It is very important that you copy the correct portion of the tag in order to be successful. Copy only the letter/number string between the quotation marks, then click Site > Tracking > Google Webmaster. Paste the code into the designated field, and then click on the "x" in the top-right corner to save the change.
For detailed, step-by-step, instructions on how to verify your site with Google Webmaster and submit a sitemap, please see our Google Webmaster Tutorial.
Please use our instructions and not Google's. Google's are written on the assumption that you are coding the website from scratch. Our instructions are written to work specifically with Yola.


Google Webmaster - Tutorial: Google Webmaster Tools


Google Webmaster Tools will help you to manage Google's indexing of your site. Yola has made it possible for you to take advantage of Google Webmaster's website optimization tools. In this tutorial, we will give you step-by-step instructions on how to verify your site and submit a Sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools.

Step 1: Verifying Your Site with Google Webmaster

If your site is not yet published to the web, you will have to do so first, because you will need the URL (web address) during the verification process. If you have not published your site yet, please follow the steps in this tutorial : Publishing Your Site.
Once your site is published, you will see the URL on the top left-hand corner of the Sitebuilder. If you click on that link, it will open up your site on the web.

Google Webmaster homepage


Copy the URL - in our example, it is http://posteddesigns.yolasite.com - and head on over to Google Webmaster Tools to get started. If you do not have a Google account, you will have to create one, otherwise sign in with your Google login details.
On the Webmaster Tools homepage, you will see a welcome message and below it, a box to add your site's URL. Paste or type the URL into the box and click on "Add A Site".


Google Webmaster homepage

The verification screen will open up. You need to verify that you are the owner of the website you have just added.

Google Webmaster homepage

A. Click on the "Alternate methods" tab.
B. Select "HTML tag". Please ignore the instructions that Google provides, as it is slightly different in Yola, and follow these steps.
C. Copy the portion of the tag next to "content", between the quotation marks. In our example, the section to copy is : P3VSRBQmjL9T2zeNRfEBHQb8v3SbEne7bnB2CRTEcgs.
Please use the code that is displayed on your Google Webmaster account, otherwise it will not verify your site. Make sure that you have copied everything between the quotation marks.
D. Click on the "Verify" button at the bottom of the page. If you have verified your site correctly, you will see the message "Congratulations, you have successfully verified your ownership …".
Click on the "Continue" link underneath the message. This will take you to the "Site Dashboard" page.

Now that you have the verification code, you need to add it to your Yola site. Here are the steps to do it :
  1. Go back to your Yola site and make sure you are in the Sitebuilder.
  2. Then go to Site > Tracking > Google Webmaster.
  3. Paste the verification code into the space provided.
  4. Click on "Save" to save the code to your site.
  5. In the Sitebuilder, click on "Publish". This will update your site on the web, so that Google can see it has been verified.

Step 2 : Submitting a Sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools

When you publish your site, Yola generates a Sitemap for the site. This is not something you will notice when your site is published, because it happens "behind the scenes". You can submit your Sitemap to Google, using Google Webmaster Tools. Doing this, will give Google more information about your site. If you want to find out more about Sitemaps and why these are useful to Google, please see About Sitemaps.
The Sitemap for your published site, is the site's URL (web address), followed by "/sitemap.xml". In our example, the Sitemap will be : http://posteddesigns.yolasite.com/sitemap.xml.

To submit your Sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools :
  1. Log into your Google Webmaster Tools account.
  2. Make sure you are on the "Site Dashboard" page.
  3. Click on "Sitemaps". This will open up the Sitemaps screen. Make sure that you have the correct site selected. You will find the name of the selected site, just above the red "Add/Test Sitemap" button.
  4. Click on "Add/Test Sitemap". A screen will open up, with the name of the selected site. Enter "sitemap.xml" (without the " ") in the space provided.
  5. Click on "Submit Sitemap". You will see a "Sitemap submitted" message.
Congratulations! You have now successfully verified your site and submitted a Sitemap, using Google Webmaster Tools. Once Google crawls your site, you will be able to log into your Google Webmaster account to see data that will help you to optimize your site for Google.

Related Topics:

Where do I get more information on how Google Webmaster works?
Help! Google Webmaster gives me errors and I don't know what they mean!

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Tracking visitors to your site

Tracking visitors to your site - Why is Google Analytics not working?

If you are having trouble with Google Analytics not tracking your website, there are a few reasons this might be happening:
  1. Have you republished your site? You must republish your site in order for any changes you have made to take effect. To do this click on the green "Publish to the web" button.
  2. Have you copied the complete code provided by Google Analytics and pasted it into the Google Analytics ID field? To check, click on Site > Site Settings > Tracking > Google Analytics.
  3. When did you add Google Analytics to your site? It takes 24 hours for data on your site to be available in your Google Analytics account.
Please see this link on Google's Support Page: Why isn't Google Analytics tracking my website? for more information.
You can also take a look at our tutorial for more information: Adding Analytics.


Tracking visitors to your site - How do I find out how many visitors I have had on my site?

Why should you add site analytics? A lot of people want to know how many people have been onto their site and tend to use hit counters. The information provided can be quite limited, and isn't as accurate as using analytics for your site.

Yola has a Site Traffic feature that allows you to view the amount of traffic your site is getting. In order to see this feature, log into your Yola account. Once you're logged in, click on "Site Traffic" on the left hand side.

If you have a Yola Free or Yola Bronze account, you will be able to view the total number of visits over the past 7 days. If you have a Yola Silver or Yola Gold account, you will be able to view the total number of visits and unique visitors by day over the last 30 days.
If you decide that you would rather add a hit counter, you can get a hit counter on your site by using the Google Gadgets Widget, then follow these steps:
  1. Drag and drop the Google Gadgets Widget onto your page (you can find it in Widgets > More > Misc).
  2. A dialog box will open.
  3. Click on "Google Gadgets" at the bottom-right of the box, to open the Google Gadgets page in a new tab.
  4. Click on the category you'd like or use the search field if you would like to see more options.
  5. Choose the widget you would like to use on your site and click on "Add to your webpage".
  6. Customize the settings as required.
  7. Click on "Get the Code" button.
  8. Copy the generated HTML code.
  9. Go back to the Sitebuilder and paste the code in the field provided.
  10. Save and preview your page to view the widget.
You can also search for "free hit counter" and use a service like website-hit-counters.com. To embed one of these hit counters in your page:
  1. Copy the HTML code the hit counter service provides.
  2. Clicking on the Widgets > Popular > HTML.
  3. Drag and drop the HTML Code Widget onto your page
  4. Paste the code into the HTML editor.
  5. Save and preview your page to view the hit counter.
Adding Google Analytics:
Another alternative is to use Google Analytics. We provide step-by-steps instructions for Google Analytics to your site here: Adding Analytics.

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Tracking visitors to your site - Google Analytics doesn't seem to work

Are you are having problems getting Google Analytics to work? Here are some steps that may help you:
  1. Have you republished your site? You must republish your site in order for any changes you have made to take effect.
  2. Have you copied the complete code provided by Google Analytics and pasted it into the Google Analytics ID field? To check, click on Site > Tracking > Google Analytics.
  3. When did you add Google Analytics to your site? It takes 24 hours for data on your site to be available in your Google Analytics account.
  4. Please see this link on Google's Support Page: Why isn't Google Analytics tracking my website? for more information.
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Tracking visitors to your site - Tutorial: Adding Analytics

Why should you add analytics? A lot of people want to know how many people have been onto their site and are only interested in a hit counter. These are limited and aren't as accurate as analytics for your site.



Yola has a Site Traffic feature that allows you to view the amount of traffic your site is getting. In order to see this feature, log into your Yola account. Once you're logged in, click on "Site Traffic" on the left hand side. If you have a Yola Free or Yola Bronze account, you will be able to view the total number of visits over the past seven days. If you have a Yola Silver or Yola Gold account, you will be able to view the total number of visits and unique visitors by day over the last 30 days.
If you prefer to use Google Analytics, you still can. If you have an AdWords account, you can use Google Analytics directly from the AdWords interface. Google Analytics also calculates ROI metrics from automatically imported cost and keyword tracking data, saving you time.

Google Analytics

Yola makes it easy for you to add Google Analytics to your site. All you need is a code, which you add to your Site Settings - we set everything else up for you! Here's how to get started:

Step 1:

Go to Google Analytics, and click on "Sign Up Now" (located underneath the "Access Analytics" button) to begin the signup process.

Step 2:

On the next screen, click "Sign Up".

Step 3:

On the "Create New Account" page, fill in the details required. The "Account Name" is the name that will appear in your Google Analytics reports. Once you're finished, agree to the Terms and Conditions and click "Create Account".

Step 4:

You will be taken directly to the "Tracking Code" section so that you can copy the code provided and add it to your website. Copy the "Web Property ID" tracking code provided (located in the "Tracking Status Information" section). You can do this by highlighting the whole code and right-clicking and selecting "Copy". The code will look something like this: UA-23459878-1.

Step 5:

Go to back to your Sitebuilder and open up your site.
  1. Click on Site > Tracking > Google Analytics.
  2. Paste your Google Analytics tracking code into the "Google Analytics ID" field provided.
  3. Click on the "X" in the top right corner to save the change.
Please note: Once you have added the code you should not see anything on your page. It is an invisible tracking code, that sends the information to your Google Analytics account.

Step 6:

Republish your site by clicking the "Publish" button.
Your site will then be verified and you can log in to your Google Analytics account to find out all the information you want to know about the people who have visited your site. Please be aware that it takes 24 hours for Google Analytics to collect the first batch of data about your site.

For a really great article on getting started with Google Analytics please check out this link: How To: Get started with Google Analytics.
If you are not happy with Google Analytics the following options are also available.

Please note: There are many more and we have selected just three.

WebTrends

Webtrends has some great analytics tools that are in some instances better then Google Analytics but the catch is that you have to pay for them. They offer a unique "One View" approach to your website offering and clientele which is very useful.

Clicktracks

Clicktracks has recently been incorporated into lyris HQ but is still available as a standalone product and is still great Analytical software. It is a very secure system which allows info stored on your own (not theirs) server for extra privacy.

Clicky


Clicky is a web analyzer that tracks a high level of detail on every visitor. Once you create an account, add one or more web sites to that account. For each web site you register, you are given two lines of HTML code to place on your web site (this code is unique for each registered site). Clicky offer a free plan plus several premium plans.

An excellent article on these providers and more can be found at Idealware.org.


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Adding Advertising 

Adding Advertising - Google AdSense is showing competitor ads

Google AdSense provides the functionality to block specific ads from appearing on your pages; this is done with a competitive ad filter. Here is a link to the Google AdSense Help Center with more information on how to set this up: Setting up a competitive ad filter.


Adding Advertising - Adding advertising to your site


You can most certainly place ads on your site. There are a number of ways to do this:
  1. We have a Google AdSense Widget to make adding this effective advertising tool easy for you. Simply open the "Ecommerce" folder and drag and drop the AdSense Widget onto your page. Click on the link in the dialog box to sign up for an AdSense account. Once you have signed up and your site has been approved, Google will provide you with an advertising code. Copy this code and paste it into the Google AdSense Widget you've just added to your site. You will shortly begin to get ads on your site.
  2. Add a banner image to your site using either the Text Widget (click "Insert Image" on the Text Editing Toolbar) or use a Picture Widget. You can then turn your banner ad into an active link using our link editor. For more information, see this handy tutorial: Creating Links.
  3. You can place any other form of advertising on your site as long as you can source the HTML embed code. Integrate this with your Yola page by dragging an HTML Widget onto your page and pasting the HTML embed code into the HTML editor.
Please note: You are responsible for getting your site approved by your chosen ad network. We can assist you with instructions on how to build your site, but each ad program has their own set of requirements and it will be up to you to ensure that your site meets those requirements.


Adding Advertising - I've been rejected by Google Adsense!


Unfortunately the Yola team isn't able to answer questions about Google AdSense program or their policies.
If you have any questions about the AdSense program, consult the AdSense support center at Google Adsense Help. They have a help center with FAQs and a forum that you can post to with AdSense-specific questions.
Using a tool like Yola to create and host your website won't help or hurt you getting into AdSense - all websites are held to a set of eligibility requirements by the AdSense team.


Adding Advertising - Google AdSense not displaying relevant ads


It takes time for Google to crawl your site and "learn" what your content is about. As time passes, and as you update your site, the ads will become increasingly relevant. See this post in the Google AdSense help center: Why Aren't My Ads Relevant for more information about this process.


It might be a good idea to first develop your site and start attracting traffic before placing AdSense on your site; this will give your site more credibility and when you do place the ads, Google will have enough data about your site to make the ads more targeted.

Google AdSense only works if the ads are relevant and targeted to your readership, so Google writes sophisticated programs to ensure that this is the case. However, it takes time and you need to work with their system in order to be successful.


Adding Advertising - Adding Google AdSense


Want to know to know how to add Google Ad's to your site? Here are two options:
You can place AdSense on your page by using the Google AdSense Widget:
  1. Click on Widgets > Ecommerce.
  2. Drag and drop the Google AdSense Widget onto your page.
  3. In the dialog box that opens, click on the link to sign up for an AdSense account if you don't already have one.
  4. Once you've registered your account and customized your ad, copy the advertising code provided by Google.
  5. Paste the code back in the dialog box on your Yola site.
  6. Click "Save".



You can also add Google AdSense using the Google Gadgets Widget:
  1. Drag and drop the Google Gadgets Widget onto your page (located in Widgets > More > Misc).
  2. A dialog box will open.
  3. Click on "Google Gadgets" at the bottom-right of the box, to open the Google Gadgets page in a new tab.
  4. Use the search field and type in "Google AdSense".
  5. Choose the widget you would like to use on your site and click on "Add to your webpage".
  6. Customize the settings as required.
  7. Click on "Get the Code" button.
  8. Copy the generated HTML code.
  9. Go back to your page and paste the code in the field provided.
  10. Save and preview your page to view the widget.

Google Gadgets dialog box

Please note: You might not see the ad immediately, as it can take a short while for it to be initialized by Google. Wait few a minutes, and click "refresh" and the ads will display. Your site needs to be published before Google can initialize the ads. If you have not already done so, please publish your site before trying to place Google Ads.


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