Tracking Your Stats

I am fanatical about tracking the stats on my blogs. I don’t mean just page views and visits, either. While those can give you an idea of how you are doing, the real meat is in the referral stats and the entry page stats.

As I said in a previous post, the search engines read each post as a new page on your website, (disclaimer: at least they do on a good blog platform). By monitoring your entry page statistics you can easily see which post is getting the attention of your readers. Go back and analyze the top few posts and see what it was that you did that is attracting so much attention. Was it the topic, the image or a great use of key words and phrases? Is there a common thread among them? Whatever it was, repeat it.

Look at your referrals with the same mind set. Which words or phrases are resulting in visits to your blog? Look at the searches and follow the links if need be. Find out what terms brides are using to find you. I think you will be amazed by what you see. It isn’t generic “keywords’’ like wedding flowers; it’s extended strings like “wedding centerpieces with branches and crystals”. It’s not “wedding gown Denver” its “sweetheart neckline wedding gown by Monique Lhullier discount”.

This is why blogging is so powerful. Every time you post you add words and phrases that brides are searching on. Those build up over time. If a particular term is strong for you, keep posting on topics that relate to it using similar terms.

I also get a remarkable amount of referrals for Google images over on my Wedding Dish blog; something like one in three is from an image search. Now remember, the search robots cannot see what is in your pictures, they only read the words you put with them. The key is to title, label and describe your images when you post them. Again, click through the referrals in you stats to see what they were originally looking for when they found you. Now use that in your posts.

If you follow this, and continue to refine your posts by the referrals you are getting you don’t have any choice but to raise your traffic and your visibility.

Why is blogging such a powerful tool for search? A lot of it has to do with the sheer mass on content that gets added to you site over time. If you post 3 or 4 times a week you are adding 12 to 16 new pages to your site every month, over a year that’s an amazing 144 to 192 NEW PAGES a year. Yes Virginia, the search engines do look at how many pages you have.

Now if you figure that every one of those posts contains 2 to 3 possible terms that your future brides may be using to search, you have built a powerful base of keywords, without really trying.
Without really trying I mean that you can’t just write a blog post as a frame for your keywords. You may or may not know that I ghost write for some blogs. The first thing a client says is I want you to include these keywords. Sorry gang, it doesn’t work that way. Don’t get me wrong, keywords are important to search but just seeding your posts with them doesn’t work. You have two end users for your blog: your readers and the search engines. If you write exclusively for search your readers will disappear.

If you want to write effective copy for your readers you have to think more about what you want to say and less about the keywords you think you need..First off, brides don’t search by keywords, they search be questions and descriptions. Second, the images you choose and how you label them may be your most effective search weapon anyway. Unlike a static website, you get more than one chance to hit the words they are using to search.

Let’s look at how that works. Suppose you put up a post talking about a recent wedding and you use descriptive words. Example:

“I loved how this contemporary centerpiece of red and orange gerber daisies turned out for Sara & Mike’s wedding at (local hot venue)in (town) last week.” Follow it up with “Designing the floral décor for (local hot venue) is always fun because it offers so many possibilities.” Now label your image as “Contemporary wedding centerpiece at (local hot venue), (town).”
Every one of those highlighted words is a possible search term but the paragraph reads well to the end user. You add a dozen posts like that a month and without really trying you are going eventually cover just about every possible search term that a bride could use to describe what you do.

Are you starting to see how this works? It is about volumes of descriptive words that you use every day to tell people about your work that just build up over time. You bundle that with a well designed blog that is built to be search friendly in the first place and you have gold.
The bonus is that once indexed by the search engines, those posts are there forever. I am still getting hits off a post I put up nearly 3 years ago on an old blog I don’t even post to anymore. Yes, I do check that stuff and use it to improve my search rankings, but that if for tomorrow’s topic.

I keep hearing people say they can’t blog because they don’t know how or what to write. Just stop that. You do know what to write and you do know how; well that is if you are capable of carrying on a conversation about something you are passionate about with a friend. That’s what blogging is really, a conversation with a friend that shares your passion.
Blogging, and all of social media for that matter, is about personal engagement. It is about sharing your thoughts on a particular topic and inviting feedback. You aren’t writing your thesis and there isn’t a white collared professor that is going to nit-pick your syntax. If you can use spell check and have mastered elementary school grammar, you’ll do fine.
With that out of the way, the question of what to talk about is next off everyone’s lips. Don’t over think it, my friends. There are only 2 rules to this:
1. Stay on topic
2. Think about what your audience wants to know

Stay on Topic: this is easy if before you ever start to blog you write the tagline or mission statement for your blog. Use one brief sentence telling your audience what they will find in your blog, then just stick to that. It doesn’t have to even be a sentence, just a phrase works. For instance:
Beautiful Wedding Gowns and the Things That Go With Them

Now just keep every post to that topic; don’t go off the reservation and start posting about your dog or your vacation. If you own a bridal salon you can’t tell me that you don’t run across at least 3 things a week that make you go, “Ooooh,pretty”. Isn’t that why you got into the business in the first place? Now keep a list of those things and start sharing. Use as many descriptive words as you can and tell why it made you notice it. There you are done. No research, no struggling, just a running stream of consciousness on something you love.

What your audience wants to know: Whatever business you are in, your customers ask questions. Well here is your platform to answer in detail after you have had time to think about it. Let’s keep with the bridal salon example. Show a real bride in a gown and explain why the cut of that particular dress worked well on her particular figure. Tell why the color works when a different one wouldn’t. Give them real information; they will keep coming back for more.

As I said at the start, blogging is just a new form of conversation. You mastered conversation via email and you can master this too.

Now that I have convinced you that you can do it, tomorrow I go into why it works to help your search rankings and how you can master that too.

Bridal shows are a lot like speed dating. You are there to find potential matches for your services. The more you can run through quickly the better chance you have of find those few that will actually book you. Don’t waste your time on the ones that obviously won’t.
I found this quote from Jason Frederich of Screaming Light Studios on the Open Source Forum that sums it up fairly well:

As one of the speakers at the last convention we attended said, while they’re in front of you at the show is the best possible time to figure out if they’re worth spending any more time on, or not. Do they have a wedding date? If no, hand them a brochure and move on. Does your price put them off? Thank you, next! The whole point of the show is to match you up with potential clients, not to stand around for 6-8 hours talking to people who can’t afford/don’t need you.

Read the thread, it has some great information for everyone, not just photographers.

That is Jason’s booth in the image above. Great job Jason. Does the cat make a lot of sales at the show?

Here are the major take-aways from this series.

• Start your prep early
• Do as much pre-show marketing as you can
• Set your booth apart and tie it into your handouts
• Be on during the entire show and leave the right impression
• Network with the other vendors
• Gather leads in your booth for your post show marketing
• Follow up, follow up, follow up
• Track your response for next year’s marketing plan

Bridal shows are a lot of work and expensive to do. They are a few hours of brutally intense marketing sandwiched between prep and follow up. If you are going to invest your time and treasure in this marketing tool you need to use every trick in your arsenal to make them pay off. Otherwise stay home and put your feet up.

For more good stuff on bridal shows, subscribers can check out this month’s Marketing Column at Think Like A Bride. Not already a subscriber of Think? Here is a free month on me.

Nearly every new client that calls me says the same thing; “I want to reach that top end luxury market bride.” Well here is a tip: you won’t find them at a bridal show. Read more

Bridal shows are a lot of work and can be fairly expensive. It is not just the booth fee but what you put in it that adds up. Even rental companies spend a small fortune on labor to get everything set up. Read more

Here is part 2 of my 10 Tips for Bridal Shows. Today’s installment is all about the day of the show. Read more

Bridal show season is nearly upon us so I thought I’d bring you my top ten tips for a successful bridal show. Because I wanted to go a little more in-depth that a bullet point list I am breaking them up. Today’s installment Read more

I found a great video today about why blogging works for SEO. It is a question I am asked nearly every day. John Haydon of CorporateDollar.org does a great job of explaining it in easy terms.