Understanding Webalyzer

Here’s a sample of Webalyzer statistics in action
http://www.mrunix.net/webalizer/sample/index.html

Understanding the Webalyzer’s analysis of your site

The Webalizer is a web server log file analysis program which produces usage statistics in HTML format for viewing with a browser. The results are presented in both columnar and graphical format, which facilitates interpretation. Yearly, monthly, daily and hourly usage statistics are presented, along with the ability to display usage by site, URL, referrer, user agent (browser), search string, entry/exit page, username and country (some information is only available if supported and present in the log files being processed). Processed data may also be exported into most database and spreadsheet programs that support tab delimited data formats. The following is an explanation of the terms used in a typical Webalyzer report.

Referrers
Referrers record sites that are sending visitors to your site by way of hypertext links. This is valuable information when determining how your search engines presence is affecting your site’s traffic.

Hits
Any request made to the server which is logged, is considered a ‘hit’. The requests can be for anything… html pages, graphic images, audio files, CGI scripts, etc… Each valid line in the server log is counted as a hit. This number represents the total number of requests that were made to the server during the specified report period.

Files
Some requests made to the server, require that the server then send something back to the requesting client, such as a html page or graphic image. When this happens, it is considered a ‘file’ and the files total is incremented. The relationship between ‘hits’ and ‘files’ can be thought of as ‘incoming requests’ and ‘outgoing responses’.

Pages
Pages are generally any HTML document or anything that generates an HTML document. This does not include the other objects included in a document, such as graphic images, audio clips, etc… This number represents the number of ‘pages’ requested only, and does not include the other objects included on the page. What actually constitutes a ‘page’ can vary from server to server. The default action is to treat anything with the extension ‘.htm’, ‘.html’ or ‘.cgi’ as a page. A lot of sites will probably define other extensions, such as ‘.phtml’, ‘.php3′ and ‘.pl’ as pages as well.

Sites
Each request made to the server comes from a unique ‘site’, which can be referenced by a name or ultimately, an IP address. The ‘sites’ number shows how many unique IP addresses made requests to the server during the reporting time period. This does not mean the number of unique individual users (real people) that visited. This is impossible to determine using just logs and the HTTP protocol although however, this number is as close as you will get.

What is Google Analytics?

In the tireless quest to make the Internet a place where we can all turn to get answer,s Google launched Google Analytics in 2006. Google analytics is a statistics package which monitors your web site traffic and helps you understand almost everything you need to know about your web site’s visitors.

When I am starting a new search engine optimization campaign the first step I take is to set up the web site with Google Analytics. Setting up a typical site can Roomtake about 20 minutes for your web master. If he asserts that you already have web site statistics being collected on your site, insist on Google Analytics. It will help us to be speaking the same language as we progress through the course. Google Analytics is easy to use, works on ANY web site, it is easy to read, easy to set up and, best of all it is 100% free!

You can sign up for Google Analytics by visiting http://www.google.com/analytics

It’s is important to set this up as early as possible. As your progress in developing your web site you will want to track how traffic is growing and glean clues about what to do next with your web site’s content development. It will be most gratifying to look back at the progress you’ve made from the beginning of your Internet Marketing efforts.

It is important to note that your web master can set up Google Analytics to send weekly reports in PDF format right to your email. Later in the course we will return to your statistics and talk about how to use the data to inform your web marketing strategy.

DO IT NOW!

The term Web natives refers to people who are increasingly comfortable with life online. These Web natives are more likely to use tools such as social networking; blogging; instant messenger and other instant messaging tools to maintain and increase their sphere of contacts and associates. For them online life has become a primary part of their social behaviour.

Users create, not just consume!

Increasingly users are contributing content rather than just consuming it.

Exploit the Long Tail
The Long tail refers to the increasing prevalence of marketing which targets very specific niches. Given the increasing prevalence of users who are connected to the Internet ,who use Internet connected devices, Web savvy marketers have begun a land rush to gain the marketing advantages associated with these niches.

An excellent example of long tail marketing is what has been done by Amazon.com. Amazon.com does not limit its product list to top 40 and a bestseller titles. Amazon.com lists as many titles as it can which allows it to appeal to the broadest audience imaginable. Amazon has aptly demonstrated that at the Internet scale even niche communities are very large and well worth the attention of marketers.

Users can enrich your data
Websites that decide to use Web 2.0 as a marketing strategy allow end-users and the general public to contribute comments and content to their websites. RRather than presenting a liability, if properly moderated, “harnessing the collective intelligence of users” allows these website owners a sensitivity to the opinions and views of their customers which they would not otherwise have.

Agile Engineering

• Incrementally develop your product; short release cycles

• User forums and feedback environments allow Web 2.0 marketers and digital product developers the luxury of responding with incremental development of their products. Having a community relationship with customers permits a conversation dynamic to take place.

“The Perpetual Beta”
Products supported using Web 2.0 feedback structures can be in a state of perpetual beta. The products never really reach a completed state and yet avoid the stigma up being unfinished. This is possible since it is understood by the participants that the quality of the product is the larger responsibility of everyone involved. For more information on a collaborative and open source development check out Wikipedia’s article on when Linux at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux

Maturation of the browser
The Internet browser has become much more than a document viewer. Technologies such as ex-HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and a host of a server side technologies such as cold fusion, PHP, Ruby on rails, and others have opened floodgates of possibility for developers who want to develop for the Web 2.0 paradigm.

The browser has become, among other things, the perfect online collaboration tool.

RSS and Content Syndication

What is RSS?
The acronym RSS stands for “really simple syndication” RSS is a simple standardized format for publishing listings of frequently updated works. These might include news feeds, news headlines and blog listings. These listings are commonly known as feeds. Subscribers to feeds are automatically notified by of the program they use to subscribe to their RSS feeds whenever there are new articles or available updates.

Blog services and environments such as Blogger and Word press allow blog contributors to automatically generate RSS listings which can be subscribed to by the public. The ease of that in which RSS content is made available for syndication qualifies it for consideration under the Web 2.0 banner.

Services such as Bloglines allow users to subscribe to a wide and customizable menu of RSS feeds from a variety of publishers including traditional media sources such as CNN and others.

Noteworthy Examples of Web 2.0 applications and Sites
The following are noteworthy examples of Web 2.0 applications which are changing the way we consume and contribute content. You’ll find that this list further underscores the extraordinary prevalence Web 2.0 in our everyday lives.

Ipods, Podcasts and Music 2.0
If the MP3 was the death knell to the music industry then the iPod and the podcast nailed the coffin lid shut on traditional radio. Rather than having to cruise around the dial looking for something entertaining listeners and can program their iPods with a custom menu of content on virtually any topic, commercial free.

Music lovers need not suffer the indignity of listening to top 40 radio where three to 400 songs steadily rotate 24 hours a day. They need only load up their iPod, plug in, and enjoy hundreds of hours of commercial free music from their own collections or the iTunes Web store.

Again, the control of content has been wrested from the traditional media outlets. As a result the iTunes service has become the largest music distributor, ahead of such giants as Wal-Mart and Best Buy. All this fueled in large part by the collaboration and customization which Web 2.0 has made possible.

Here’s some more fun statistics:
In the 2008 “Lets Rock” event at Apple Steve Jobs reported the following:

1. July 2008 US MP3 market share: 73.4% iPod, 8.6% Sandisk, 2.6% Microsoft, 15.4% other
2. iTunes has over 8.5 million songs, 125k podcasts, 30k episodes of TV shows, 2.6k Hollywood movies and 3k applications for iPhone and iPod touch
3. App Store: 100 million app downloads in 60 days
4. App Store: More than 3k applications, 90% priced less than $10, 600 total apps are free

“…the lack of a crisp definition is a feature, not a bug. …And as the world shifts from the limited variety of bottlenecked distribution to the infinite variety of open distribution, there will be more examples of phenomena that are hard to define but are nevertheless real and true. The future is increasingly heterogeneous, not homogeneous. One size doesn’t fit all.”

Chris Anderson, “Web 2.0 and the Long Tail, Part 2″ The Long Tail (see What is the Long Tail?)

The best way to come to terms with understanding Web 2.0 is to abandon the use of the term and then take a look at the revolutionary web services which are driving it’s development. In the ensuing chapters we will talk about some of the major players and talk about how their unique approaches to push-button publishing are changing the way marketers are interacting with the public.

First lets looking at the social and technologic forces which make Web 2.0 possible.

Why is this Happening Now?

The Web 2.0 phenomena is spreading like wildfire. Let’s consider some of the reasons:

Reason 1: The Spread of High Speed Internet Access
Broadband, or “high speed” access to the internet has become increasingly common.

Consider the following chart from internetworldstats.com http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

Introduction: What is Social Networking

In 1398 an enterprising German goldsmith set about to turn the control of information on it’s head. Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (Big John to his friends) devised an extraordinary device which took the centralized control of book production away from the Church. Thanks to moveable type, and the printing press, books could suddenly be mass-produced at low cost. Before the invention of moveable type, book production was an excruciating and understandably time-consuming task of professional copyists.

Fast forward to the World Wide Web.

The World Wide Web further facilitated the production and dissemination of documents in a way that the printed word never could. However, the Web was still under the control of traditional media outlets, corporations and anyone with the technical skills to contribute and create the content.

In the early days of the Web it was simply providing consumable content with precious little interactivity. In many respects the old web was nothing more than a glorified magazine. The old web, or Web 1.0, if you will, allowed only the most technical users to interact and contribute content. Companies and corporations who wished to participate in the development of content needed to do so with the assistance of gatekeepers such as IT personnel, web designers and programmers.

All that changed with the rise of Web 2.0.
Suddenly a growing list of web sites allowed contribution from a wider segment of the population using a growing list of web-enabled devices. The Web 2.0 revolution was set to completely change the landscape of the World Wide Web and challenged conventional media and marketing in astonishing and unpredictable ways.

The purpose of these articles is to help you to understand what Web 2.0 is in practical terms and show you what you can do to fully exploit its potential as an Internet marketing tool.

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How to get your business listed on Google Places

Upon searching for a business in your area you’ve likely seen Google listing businesses alongside one of their maps with pushpin icons indicating the locations of the businesses listed. Try the search for “hotel” with your city name and state or province to see what I mean. These listings provide a real convenience to searchers and a massive benefit to businesses to are able to include themselves in those listings.

Here’s how it’s done:

1. First visit the “Google Places ” at http:// www.google.com/local/add
2. If you have a Gmail account you will be asked to log in with it. If you don’t, sign up for one – it’s free.
3. Fill out all the forms with your businesses contact information and follow the screen prompts to the end of the process.
4. At the end Google will give you some authentication options. The fastest one is by phone. If you are doing this for someone else, call them before your continue with the process and let them know an automated message will be calling them with a PIN number. Have them call you back when they have it. It only takes a minute for Google to call.
5. Proceed to the next screen
6. Enter the PIN number
7. The listing will go online within 24 hours.

If the steps that follow overwhelm you, we are happy to perform this service for you for a one time fee of $75 + any renewal charges incurred. If you are transferring to our domain and hosting environment we only charge the renewal and applicable hosting fees. We can usually move a domain and hosting within 12 hours of authorization from you depending on the services and programs running on your current hosting provider.

STEP 1: Verify the Authoritative Email address for the domain
Successful domain transfers are only possible when you have access to or control of the admin or technical email address which is on the domain record. Sometimes due to privacy settings on a domain it is not possible to find out what the email address listed is.

If there are no privacy settings in force you can view the domain record by visiting swhois.net or some other “whois” service. You may also visit internic.com if you have exceeded the number of free “whois” queries allowed on the “whois” site.

If the you still have access to the email address listed on the domain record then you can safely proceed to the next step.

STEP 2: Determine who the current domain registrar is
Visit http://www.internic.net/whois.html and enter the domain name. Use Google to search for the companies’ web site address. In some cases large registrars like enome and opensrs deputize resellers to deal with the public directly. When you visit their web sites during your research they will usually give you some other tools which you can use to determine who the reseller registrar is. It is likely that they will insist upon you dealing with the reseller directly for the steps that follow.

Sometimes the Internic registrar search returns the name of the actual registrar you will be dealing with. Don’t count on it though.

In the case of .ca domains you can get any this information on the CIRA.CA website.

.COM .NET .ORG Domains

STEP 2: Get the EPP or Authorization Key

YOU DO NOT NEED AN EPP KEY FOR .CA DOMAINS. IF YOU ARE TRANSFERRING A .CA SKIP TO THE NEXT SECTION

You or the customer must contact the registrar by email or phone and request the EPP key. Use the following exact wording to avoid disappointment and aggravation:

“Please email the EPP Authorization Key to the email address listed on the domain
name (INSERT DOMAIN NAME HERE). Also please unlock the domain name”

NOTE: If the domain name is not unlock the transfer request will be automatically rejected by the current registrar.

Be sensitive to whatever bizarre authorization processes the current registrar requires. These range from the ridiculous to the sublime.

Set the EPP code aside. Start the transfer process with your new registrar. This process differs from registrar to registrar. If in doubt, call them and have them do all the heavy lifting. NEVER DEAL WITH A REGISTRAR WHO HAS NO POSTED PHONE NUMBER.

.CA

Start the transfer process with your registrar. CIRA will send the login and password for the domain to the email address on the domain record. Opensrs will send you the links to the transfer request authorization screen on the CIRA system. When you get that fill in the login and password you received earlier from CIRA. The transfer can take a couple of days. If you do not put in the login and password within 48 hours of the initial transfer request the transfer will fail and will have to be restarted.

Renewal Years

When a domain is transferred to a new registrar an extra year is added to the domain name.

FIRST PRINTED IN MONITOR MAGAZINE (Circa 2001)

Just about every banner ad for companies selling Internet domain names reminds us of what could be called a growing shortage of really good names. Happily, though, the Internet is far from running out of decent, usable – even memorable – domain names. But you must use your imagination and know something about how domain names work before you buy.

At the ISP I work for, it is my responsibility to register domains for customers and, in some cases, suggest names when they haven’t come up with one yet. So, based on some of the questions that I get on a regular basis regarding domain name registration and hosting, allow me to explain some of the pitfalls and dispel some of the misinformation surrounding the adventure of picking your domain name!

The first thing to understand about domain names is who provides domain names. In case of the .com, .org and .net domains, a company called Network Solutions pretty much had a monopoly. In these enlightened times, though, many companies have joined the ranks of the ‘accredited domain registrars’. While there are some variations within their pricing structures, the rule of thumb continues to be that two years of service with your domain name of choice will set you back (US) $70., usually payable by credit card.

Depending on where you live in the world, you can also take advantage of national registrars who are authoritative for top level domain extensions such as .uk (United Kingdom), .nz (New Zealand) or .jp (Japan). Here in Canada, companies that are provincially incorporated (with offices in just one province) can acquire a domain with an extension of ‘.on.ca’ at no charge from Canada’s equivalent to an accredited registrar, the Canadian NIC. If a company is federally incorporated (with offices in more than one province) it can register a domain ending simply in ‘.ca’. From the Canadian NIC’s unassuming site ( http://www.cdnnet.ca/), you can run quick searches to see if the domain name you are interested in registering is available and read about the process involved in acquiring it. If you have any questions about the registration of a Canadian domain name, ask your Internet service provider to get the domain registered on your behalf.

While registering a domain name at no charge is an attractive notion, I have been asked, on many occasions, whether there is any sort of stigma attached to having a ‘.on.ca’ or ‘.ca’ domain name. Happily, there really isn’t. Internet users who happen across a ‘.on.ca’ address on a business card or other promotional material really don’t give it a second thought. Users who happen across your ‘.on.ca’ address while performing a search on the Web may never even look at your address as they click through to your site.

On the other hand your domain name can be a great vehicle for advertising hooks and incidental visitors, if you can pick one that:

really says something about your business is nice and short is easily spelled. In my humble opinion, you have a great domain/Web address if you can give it to someone over the phone without stopping to spell the whole thing out for them.

If you are wracking your brain to come up with the perfect name, there are many different things you can do to broaden the possibilities.

Certainly, taking advantage of your company’s provincial or federal incorporation can sometimes land you a domain name that has been literally sitting there waiting just for you and your business. The Canadian registrar reserves domains only for registrants whose domain requests fit their criteria. If your domain name is not an abbreviation of your business name or of the company name you are operating as ( i.e.- ONT INC 123456 o/a Bob’s Bait and Tackle) then they will reject your application. This obviously protects Canadian companies from the pervasive cyber-squatting that has so sorely plagued the .com world.

If you simply must have a .com, .net or .org, there are a number of easy things you can do to modify your address just a bit if you’re having trouble getting the exact one you want.

Say Bob’s Bait and Tackle tries to get ‘ bob.com’ and finds it taken. Since domain names can only contain alphanumeric characters and dashes, Bob can’t try ‘bobsbait&tackle.com’, as cool as that would be. But Bob might take a stab at ‘ bobsbait-n-tackle.com’ or, perhaps, register ‘bobs-b-and-t.com’.

Maybe, after some consideration, Bob decides, instead, to register the domain ‘ getworms.com’, as it will be a real eye-catcher in lime green vinyl on the side of the company truck. If you have a winning 1-800 number, why not register it as your domain name? Chances are it will be available and it will be one more reason your prospective customers will remember how to contact you when the time comes to buy.

So, remember, your domain doesn’t have to be overlong, confusing or esoteric. Even though many choose a ‘prestigious.com’ domain name, any domain that makes an impact with your customers and works well in partnership with your present advertising strategy can be really worth having!

It there another word in the consumer mind that arrests our attention more than “free”?

There is little wonder that free has such a draw for consumers. The real mystery is how a growing number of companies generate revenue by “giving it away”. In “Free: The Future of a Radical Price,” Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired magazine and the author of “The Long Tail,” sets out to explain why free is an increasingly compelling business model.

Mr. Anderson explains how the fundamental structure and economics of services delivered digitally has caused the free business models to become increasingly widespread. Central to the new “free economy,” he says, are the “near-zero ‘marginal costs’ of digital distribution (that is, the additional cost of sending out another copy beyond the ‘fixed costs’ of the required hardware).” So Google spends billions on its software and infrastructure, to get its vast search engine up and running, but each incremental search costs it almost nothing.

For an example of this, please look at the wall street journal article for a full review.

So what does this mean to those of us selling physical products out here in the real world?

Free information means higher web site ranking
Well it simply comes down to content, text content specifically.

Google has spent a king’s ransom to develop software to evaluate web sites based on the content it finds when it visits.

Free information means more educated customers
We have all had dealings with a customer who was “just smart enough to be dangerous”.

The aim with educating our customers is to give them the tools they need to realize what a marvelous value you are offering as a business. (Assuming you are the best option to a discerning consumer). Even if you think you are not the clear leader in your field there are often unrecognized advantages (“Your Unique Selling Proposition”) to dealing with your company which should be highlighted in your web site copy, along with any educational material, which would help your prospective customer realize you are the natural choice. See our article on how to develop an Internet Marketing Plan for more information on “You Unique Selling Proposition”.

Free information helps to weed out unscrupulous competitors

Every industry has it’s share of fly-by-nights, snake oil salesman and charlatans. An educated customer will see past the crooks and will appreciate it when you deliver real value. Use your website to educate your customer so you are not competing with bottom feeders and villains.

Free business models, whether purveying digital products or tangible goods, are based on cross subsidy — that’s why you get a “free” mobile phone when you sign up for a long-term service plan. In the digital realm, the “freemium” model offers the elusive free lunch. Many millions of Skype users for instance, making voice and video calls over the Internet, pay nothing at all, subsidized by a smaller group of customers who pay for additional functionality. The free service is a loss leader (and cheap marketing) for premium paid services.

Advertising is plainly the best known free model. You don’t pay for Web searches, any more than you pay for network television, because in both cases ads are attached to the product you are getting free. As Mr. Anderson notes, though, advertising can’t pay for everything online. If you have a blog, “no matter how popular,” the revenue from AdSense — a Google service that places ads on Web sites — will probably never “pay you even minimum wage for the time you spend writing it.”

The “Long Tail” is a phrase which was coined by Chris Anderson in his book by the same name. In marketing terms the phrase that refers to the seemingly counter-intuitive strategy of targeting a large quantity of small niches at once rather than targeting one or two large markets.

On a graph which plots markets along an x axis and public interest in those markets along a y axis the long tail is the part of the graph which tapers off to the right. The long narrow band which plots multiple small niche markets accrues a public interest quotient which tends to meet or exceed the markets with the larger public interest.

The long tail principal is predicated on the Pareto Principal or the 80/20 rule, as it is more commonly known. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle ) The 80/20 rule simply states that 80% of something tends to account for 20% of something else. For instance 80% of sales at Amazon might be generated with 20% of the titles in their catalogue. This does not deter companies who understand the value of targeting the remaining 80%.

Benefits of Long Tail Marketing

For companies which have the resources to target the long tail there are two key benefits:

1. An additional 20% increase in their sales which they would not be able to get otherwise and
2. Having a broader selection of titles means they do not have to track trends and popularity as aggressively. Since they ostensibly have everything on their shelves when trends shift, they can usually count on being in the right place at the right time, owing to being everywhere anyway.