Track Wordpress Outbound Links With Google Analyticator Plugin

If you are a Google Analytics conspiracy theorist, this post will not be for you. For everyone else, I wanted to post a link on How To Track Outbound Links From Your WordPress Blog. It shows how to use the Google Analyticator WordPress Plugin along with Google Analytics to track your outbound links clicks. If you already have the Google Analytics code on site in the footer or header, you will need to remove it beforehand as the plugin will automatically add the code for you. Give it a try on a site.

Ready For Cyber Monday?

Well, after a great start to the holiday shopping season, Cyber Monday is just a few hours away. This day is notorious for being the busiest online shopping day. Make sure your sites are up an running properly and load fast. You may also want to check for any specials that you can promote from all of the affiliates you have a relationship with. You would be surprised of all the emails I have gotten from my affiliates that are having deals.

Promote, promote, promote. I plan on doing about 30 blog post on Monday myself across several niches. Best of luck to everyone and let's knock them dead.

Saturday Around The Web November 28th

Here are a few things for your reading pleasure. I am knee deep examining traffic this week or the list would be longer.

Marshall Kirkpatrick writes about How Blogging Has Changed Over The Last 3 Years

A cool Twitter too called Who follows Whom!

Paul Cunningham tells What the Top 100 Blogs Teach Us About Domain Names.

Dan Zarrella gives 5 Steps to Going Viral on Twitter.

Mark Jackson covers the Natural Link Building Practices.

SEO Metrics From Analytics Video

Happy Black Friday everyone. I hope everyone's traffic is through the roof like mine is today. Christmas shopping time is definitely here.

Rand Fishkin released an excellent Whiteboard Friday video on what SEO Metrics you should be looking at in your web analytics. As always, Rand does a great job of explaining the "why" behind it. Theses metrics give you a great idea of where you need to improve in certain areas of your site. Below is the video.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Analytics for SEO from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone

I am off to my wife's cousins to eat my fill of fried turkey and pecan pie. I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving. I for one am very thankful for the ability to work online for a living surrounded by wife and dog. I truly am blessed. I will be taking MOST of today off, but will probably sneak in a few hours of work later this evening. I just can't help myself. Have a great day and thanks for reading!

Dave

I Feel The Need... The Need For Speed

Nope, no Top Gun movie clip here.

Matt Cutts recently did an interview at PubCon with Mike McDonald and talked about Google Caffeine and more importantly gave a hint about how site speed MAY matter in the future in regards to ranking. He noted a few tools you may want to bookmark.

http://code.google.com/speed

http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/

The second link is a Firefox plugin which is pretty dang cool. I highly suggest you give it a try. The video interview is below.

Need A Starting Point? - What Do You want For Christmas?

I get an email every now and again from those that are new to business and wondering where to start niche wise. It is always easiest to niche about things you know the most about. Being it is about Christmas time, why not start with what you want for Christmas. Put down a list of 10 things you would most want for a gift this holiday season. It is a great place to start and will hold your attention, because you already have a vested interest in it. Now this does not mean you set up a Blackberry site, but you can start to attack that niche from another angle. Start wide a whittle it down to an angle or sub niche with lesser competition.

I myself only want 1 thing for Christmas and that is a Booksamillion gift card so I can drink chocolate caramel lattes every Saturday until next Christmas. So I might try to attack coffee gift cards or book store gift cards.

Do not rush in choosing your niche. Research every facet from competition to keyword research. It is OK to start small, it will teach you how to rank and how to convert on a smaller scale. Be creative and think like a surfer. You can attack large niches in an indirect fashion. Force yourself to brainstorm!