1. Website metrics are free!—there are several quality, open-source software solutions that are able to gather and analyze data as well as benchmark your site against similar sites, giving you invaluable insight with minimal capital outlay.

2. Website metrics are easy to use—the free, open-source software is designed with you in mind. Most website metrics applications are capable of running custom or prepackaged reports that are displayed in visual and easy to use format. Because the software is web-based, you can access your analytics from any computer at any time.

3. Website metrics help you learn about your site’s users—once you know where visitors are going with in your site, you can see why they are going to your site and what’s most important. Web site metrics help put your site’s visitors into perspective; who they are, their geographical location, how they navigated through your site, which pages they paused at and which they skipped, if they purchased anything, and where they exited the site. This invaluable information provides actionable feedback for strategic modifications that will make your site more user friendly.

4. Website metrics will help you drive more traffic to your site—once you have installed metrics on your site and observed the trends of your users, you can start to revise your site to make it more appealing to search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Discovering how people found (or didn’t find) your site is valuable information about keyword strategies you should implement for search engine optimization.

5. Website metrics helps you plan for the future—as you monitor your site with website metrics, patterns will emerge. Use the information about these patterns and trends to help increase the traffic to your site and build your brand. As you plan upcoming marketing initiatives, consider the online community as a viable audience.

Website metrics are a crucial source of information about your web presence and your online audience. One of the best things about the web (and email) is that it provides the platform to collect endless amounts of measurable data that is waiting to be analyzed and put to good use. Make your website work for you and become one of your most valuable marketing resources.

1. Use keywords wisely
Keywords are an important search engine optimization tool that are often misused. Instead of packing a page with several keywords, it is best to select one key term (one to four words) on which your page will focus. Implementing this approach allows search engines to pick up your most important message on each page.

2. Implement header tags
Header tags are a great way to attract the attention of the search engines. Strategically placing keywords within a page’s headings and callouts strengthen a page’s ranking and is a great search engine optimization tool.

3. Incoming Links
Show support for your site by obtaining as many incoming links as possible. An incoming link is a link that connects to your site from an outside site. An effective search engine optimization tool, obtaining links will help your site grow in popularity with the search engines and Web users.

4. Be brief, but not too brief
Having an appropriate amount of content on each of your pages is another important search engine optimization tool. Pages that are too long or too short can be passed over by the search engines in favor of pages with a more approachable amount of content. Try to keep your content between 300 and 1000 words for maximum impact.

5. Always update your content
The more you update, adding content to your site, the more the search engines will have to catalog. When you add content, your site becomes active—the search engines value your efforts by pushing you higher up the ranks.

Implementing effective search engine optimization is one way for your site to be viewed by more Web users. Using these search engine optimization tools is a great way to get started and send your site up the ranks.

• Lack of credit, a slowing economy, and disappearing profits are hitting marketing budgets hard.
• Tighter budgets result in greater accountability and demonstrated return on  investments.

CEOs and tight budgets are requiring greater accountability. Fortunately the tools are better than ever to prove that budgets are allocated correctly. The Web is setting new standards for establishing metrics, gathering data, and calculating return on investment.

1. Web site analytics: More and more firms will realize the value of attaching analytics to their site. Open source software can pull infinite amounts of data into functional reports that not only reveal how many visitors reach your site, but how many were new, where they came from, where they navigated, and how much time they spent on the site. In fact, we can monitor who opened this e-mail, who clicked through to our Web site, where they navigated, and their time on our site. We are able to track individual users as well as general user trends.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): How is Google finding you? All new sites should be built to accommodate SEO. Firms will recognize how they want to be found through organic searches and take the steps to accommodate the search engines. The alternative is to pay for placement—a significantly more expensive option that gives your site immediate rankings.  There is a downside, users recognize payed placements—at least two out of every three users will click organic results before inorganic. These “pay-per-clicks” can get expensive quickly—implementing an organic SEO program will provide significantly greater returns over time.

3. On-line communities: Businesses are realizing that in the right environment, an on-line community cannot only provide important information, it can also energize a product and accelerate sales at incredible rates. They’re not for everyone, but in the right place, they can be incredibly powerful.

4. Videos: Business has discovered video. Visitors want to watch videos.  A recent web survey reports that the average web user watches nine videos a day. If you multiple that times the millions on-line, you are well into the billions. Put testimonials, media, and messages on video feeds. Keep them short to avoid latency, and load them on your site, and be sure the video’s quality accurately reflects your brand.

5. Continued Web innovation: It’s said that necessity is the mother of invention. Marketers will continue to find and develop ways to communicate through the Web. It’s the least cost method and if used correctly, can be more effective than other mediums. More businesses will put collateral on-line and allow visitors to download the material they wish. We’ll see more Web-based forms, modeling software, data gathering as well as product and service ordering. Businesses will continue to search for ways to leverage the Web to reduce costs while improving communications.

This is a great time to shift your approach to communications. Work with the right people to find ways to improve your communications, reduce your costs, and establish ways to demonstrate the value of your efforts.