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How To Filter Out C Language or ‘Bot’ Traffic From Google Analytics

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You may log into your Google Analytics account one day and see a huge surge in traffic, you will of course think this is fantastic  and dive into the traffic acquisition area to see where this traffic is coming from. You will then see that most of this traffic is direct and on close inspection its in something referred to as ‘C’ language.

Traffic surge
Traffic surge, great!

 

C language
It’s all C language traffic, not so great…

 

What is C language and why am I suddenly getting this traffic?

C language is basically ‘bots’ or other traffic from scripts and software, it is not real human visitors and thus not good for your site. Bot traffic has 100% bounce rate so its going to push your overall bounce rate up pretty high even if you ‘real’ traffic has a low bounce rate, Google puts a lot of emphasis on bounce rate these days so this could cause your site to get caught up in a Google penalty or algorithm change. Also there is a good chance that this bot traffic may be scraping content from your site.

Luckily though fixing this isn’t so difficult.

1. Log into your Google Analytics account, select the site that is getting the bot traffic and then click ‘+Add Segment’ to the right of ‘All Sessions’ in the Audience Overview.

 

Add segment

 

2. Next click the red ‘New segment’ button and you should see the following options below, for language choose ‘does not exactly match’ from the drop down menu and then choose ‘C’

 

3. Finally after clicking ‘save’ you should have a new segment option in the Audience overview, you can then select this when you want to have the C or bot traffic filtered out.

C segment

If you wish to take further action against this bot traffic and scrapers then first you need to identify the source, this can be done by going to Audience > Technology > Network and then look for an unusual network name that you don’t recognize and/or look for one that has suddenly increased its traffic to you (hint – it will most likely line up with when you saw the C traffic surge start) so do a comparison of the last few days or weeks against the previous period of time and you should have your culprit. You can then either block all traffic from this network by making some changes to your .htaccess file, you can read about how to do that here.

It’s important to know what your real traffic is and following these hints can ensure that you aren’t being led to believe that all your traffic is genuine users!

 

Best Ways to Promote Your Blog Online

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blog promotion

It’s undeniable that blogging today is one of the most effective and powerful tools for promoting brands, products and services. But it’s not enough that a business owner or company creates a blog. There should also be an effort to further promote the blog through various avenues particularly on the web.

Promoting your blog online means making sure that more people are aware of it and gaining more readers and customers moving forward. This may take time and patience but those who are doing it and are reaping the rewards can testify that it’s worth the effort.

So while the new year is just starting, consider taking these steps to raise awareness of your blog on the web.
[Read more…] about Best Ways to Promote Your Blog Online

Three Places to Syndicate Your Internet Marketing or Social Media Content

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If you have a blog with regular, great content, it may beneficial for traffic to get it syndicated on another website that brings in more traffic. There are several options for websites that syndicate content. To find one in your niche (if it isn’t internet marketing or social media), all it takes is some googling of industry keywords plus “blog syndication” or other variations.

Google News

Google News is a great resource to get syndicated on, but its process can be tedious, especially if all the guidelines aren’t followed. Once a website is syndicated, it must maintain the guidelines. The stories that are chosen by Google to appear on are by computer algorithm; websites cannot choose which of their pieces of content are going to get published on news.google.com.

However, based on the Panda update, having continuous fresh and unique content that makes an impact are most likely to get picked up by the Google News Algorithm.  Additionally, content may only appear in the Google News results for a month or so, depending on relevancy.

Business2Community

Business2Community is a great website that always has good content. There is sometimes a bit of a wait to get accepted for syndication as a Contributor, and once you are, your pieces of content are chosen by editors and you don’t have control over what gets published. Business2Community also allows its readers to contact authors through a contact form and always gives links back to the original article.

The articles on Business2Community get shared via social media regularly and the site has done a great job of promoting its contributors.

Social Media Today

Social Media Today is a lot like Business2Community when it comes to syndicating content, except it’s choosing process is more automatic and it focuses on social media-related pieces of content. If your blog covers anything about social media, it is easy to apply; once you have been accepted, you can also write unique pieces of content for the site fairly easily. This would be a great way to get exposure for unique pieces of content that are only published on Social Media Today.

Getting notification about acceptance is pretty fast and the site is vast, yet very easy to use.

When it comes to content marketing, especially if you are a blog or business offering related types of services, it is important to get as much exposure as possible. Syndicating your existing content can be an easy way to do this.

 

5 Mistakes Bloggers are Making With Social Media

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5 Mistakes Bloggers are Making With Social MediaEven though most people would regard bloggers as tech-savvy and the ones to whom they can bring their computer to when it no longer will save any more images to the desktop after the first 500. However, it is possible that bloggers are making the same mistakes many others do when it comes to social media.

Not Connecting at All

Not utilizing social media at all is most likely the worst thing a blogger can do when it comes to maintaining a presence online. Creating a social media account is free and fairly easy to do; what takes the most time and effort is keeping it maintained. Many bloggers may feel that social media takes up too much time– however, considering the missed potential when it comes to exposing their brand, it is worth the while to at least set it up.

Not Responding to Feedback

Once a social media profile is set up for a fairly active and/or highly trafficked blog, then it will mostly likely continue to grow at a fairly fast pace. This is when comments, questions, and responses to items posted as statuses on the page. Bloggers need to answer and respond to these on a timely basis, as nobody likes to be ignored, especially blog readers. Participating in the social media community for the blog can help increase loyalty and readership.

Not Sharing Their Content

One of the easiest things to automate via social media are blog post RSS feeds. Use a service like Twitterfeed.com to set this up, which allows for instant posting on someone’s Twitter or Facebook page. This can ensure that your posts are being shared automatically, without having to think about or remember it.

Not Allowing Others to Share Their Content

This is something that is a onetime set-up, but makes it easy to help blog readers share posts. For WordPress blogs, install social sharing plugins like Sharebar or Sociable.  For other types of blogs that have HTML capabilities, install an embeddable widget like AddToAny to appear at the end of posts.

Not Considering it as a Benefit

This goes back to the first mistake– taking social media for granted. Because blogging is an online writing platform, social media should be something that is easy to integrate into the overall blogging process. Most bloggers have nothing to lose when it comes to social media and should in fact add it as part of their blogging and online marketing strategy.

How to Get Your Content Shared Via Social Media

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content sharing via social media

Many companies and bloggers create content with the hopes of it going viral– that is, having it shared with thousands (if not millions) of online users around the country and the world. However, the so-called mystery of how to make content popular on social media sites and otherwise continues to be something to be solved. However, if a writer follows these guidelines, they are much more likely to have their content be shared via social media.

Make it Interesting

Content is successful only when it either answers a question for several users or entertains almost anyone who reads it. There is something to be said for content that is high-quality and content that is just there to fulfill a weekly blog post allotment. Forgo regular “fluffer” content for appealing and engaging content to make your linking ratio much more higher per post.

Make it Linkbait

This is similar to the guideline above, but there are certain types and formats of content that are much more successful online. These include top 10 lists, infographics, cartoons, tie-ins to current internet memes, mixed media posts, free widgets, and more. However, it is important to note that even though linkbait is content that is created solely for the purpose of going viral, it definitely still needs to be high quality and not something that is forced.

Make it Shareable

Offer several opportunities to share content for the readers. Include easy sharing buttons at the top and bottom or scrolling side of the content and check them regularly to ensure that they are always working (occasionally free social sharing plugins tend to be buggy at times). Besides offering sharing links to the top social networking sites like Pinterest, Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, including buttons to print and email the content also offers additional opportunities for sharing.

Make it Graphic Heavy

Content that is broken up with photos, clip art, illustrations, or infographics further supporting or describing the text can help keep a reader’s interest. It makes the content more visually appealing overall without relying on the content alone. Additionally, graphics make content easier to share on social media sites like Pinterest and Facebook that offer an image preview of the posted links.

Getting your content shared on social media takes more than luck. It takes preparation, great writing, and an interest in sharing information rather than focusing on traffic. Making the quality of the content a higher priority than getting traffic usually achieves both traffic and loyal readers.


The 3 Needs of Bloggers

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As part of a leadership course I’m teaching, I was recently prepping to teach a section on motivation theory. One modern theory was developed in the early 1960’s by David McClelland.

Entitled the “Three Needs Theory,” this is built on the assumption that we all have three motivating drivers, and one of these will be more dominant than the others.

These three motivators as described by McClelland are:

Don’t Overlook These 5 SEO On-Page Factors

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Panda is not all about content.

Since Panda came about and kung fu kicked everyone’s poor quality websites down the search results, all people are shouting is that ‘content is king’. No, not true. You, the person handling the overall SEO campaign, is king. The content is just part of the overall picture and really, producing quality content from the point you took over the project should have been your objective, regardless of what Google are doing. It’s basic common sense. With the focus on recent months having shifted across to blogger outreach and spending time writing high quality articles, it’s easy to start overlooking those essential on-page factors.  Don’t do it. You can have the best quality content in the world but you’ll be letting your site down if you don’t pay attention to the very basic on page factors which should be working in harmony with your off site link building.

The significance of some of the factors listed below is up for debate. I’m not saying they will dramatically improve your search rankings. But they will certainly not have an adverse affect. The true extent of these on-page search engine optimisation techniques can only be found when you’re testing, but if they are just minor tweaks that can be made to enhance the SEO of your site, then start doing them today! [Read more…] about Don’t Overlook These 5 SEO On-Page Factors

5 Great Security Plugins Every WordPress Blog Should Be Using

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Online security is always a topic of hot debate. Not a day goes by where someone isn’t hacked, whether they own a small site or a hugely popular one. The problem is that the more popular your site becomes, the more of a target it can be to those with unsavory intentions.

WordPress websites are often targeted by hackers due to a lack of security. The problem, however, is that there are dozens of great security plugins you could be using to ensure the safety of your layout and contents. Here are 7 to keep in mind. [Read more…] about 5 Great Security Plugins Every WordPress Blog Should Be Using