===========================================
LexiConn – September 2006 Newsletter
===========================================

In this month’s issue:
* Search Engine Optimization – Back to Basics
* Featured Client – ackley-uniforms.com
* Site Statistics

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Search Engine Optimization – Back to Basics…

There are several specific, easy to implement ideas that you can use to help your website attain higher rankings in search engines. These include choosing the right page title, keywords, meta tags and carefully worded first paragraph for each page of your site. Furthermore, the title, meta tags, and first paragraph should all contain the keywords that your website is targeting. By having the same keywords / phrases show up in all three locations you are increasing your density, thereby improving your rankings. However, you need to be sure that you do not use the same word / phrase over and over again in each section, as this could be seen as an attempt at artificial inflation which could adversely affect your rankings. Nobody knows for sure how much is too much, but generally speaking you do not want the same keywords / phrases to appear more than a dozen times in all locations, i.e. title, meta tags, and page text.

According to Jeff Ackley, president of ackley-uniforms.com, “it is still easy for a site to rank first for many two and three word search phrases.” Ackley suggests using fairly long, keyword-rich product descriptions, and carefully chosen page file names. It is also imperative that you select proper keywords to target when building your site. The majority of sites try to target the most popular keywords, whereas others look to target a niche market, whose keywords may not be that popular. An excellent free site for finding out how many searches on done on particular keywords is:

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Featured Client – ackley-uniforms.com…

This month’s featured client is ackley-uniforms.com. Ackley Uniforms was founded in 1933 as a manufacturer and brick/mortar retailer of medical uniforms, lab coats and similar apparel. Ackley Uniforms was perhaps the web’s first uniform company with an Internet presence beginning in 1993. The company’s president, Jeff Singer, handles most of the online chores himself and considers his website a hobby that became nicely profitable, as shopping cart functionality was added to the site in 2000. The company is headquartered in a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri.

http://www.ackley-uniforms.com/

Ackley Uniforms ranks well in the search engines, due to many factors, including keyword-rich product descriptions and carefully chosen More Information page file names. For more detailed information on this month’s featured client, please go to:

http://www.lexiconn.com/clients/featured.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Site Statistics…

In order to learn more about your website’s visitors, including how many visitors you had, how they found your site, what they did once they were on your site, etc., you will want to analyze your site statistics. LexiConn offers a free statistics program called Wusage that you can get to by logging into the Account Manager and going to the Site Statistics tab. This Wusage program provides a wealth of information about your site’s visitors, and a complete glossary of terms is located at:

http://www.boutell.com/wusage/8.0/definitions.html

LexiConn also offers a detailed statistics package called Urchin for $5 per month. The Urchin program is an industry leading web analytics software solution that analyzes web traffic for your website and provides accurate and easy to understand reports on your visitors. You can review past data, generate reports for certain date ranges, and export the data to applications such as Microsoft Excel or Word.

An example of the statistics that it tracks can be found at:
http://69.94.67.101:9999/

(You may login using ‘urchindemo’ as both the username and password.)

If you are interested in adding Urchin to your account, the online request form is located at:
https://lexiconn.com/lexiconn/secure/add_urchin.html

If you are a ShopSite Pro customer, LexiConn has an Urchin Ecommerce Module ($15 per month) that does everything the standard Urchin does, as well as provide you with detailed information on revenue data. This module is great for helping you analyze your sales and figure out how your customers are finding you. Full details regarding this offering can be found at:
http://www.lexiconn.com/ecommerce/shopsite/urchin.html

The statistics packages offered by LexiConn are more accurate than third party products because they process the actual raw log file containing every access made to your website. The third party products typically rely on JavaScript to calculate your statistics, but this method can be inaccurate as some users block JavaScript, meaning that their visit would never get recorded in your statistics program.