Surely as a small business owner with a professional online presence, you want to generate lots of traffic to your website and increase your sales/conversions.

Luckily for you, Google wants to help you do just that!

With Google Analytics you can learn how to turn your website visitors into returning customers and clients by learning more about who is visiting your sites – and then creating content especially for those visitors.

What Is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics (GA) is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. - Wikipedia

I use it to see how my website visitors are actually interacting with my websites and Blogs – and where my web traffic is coming from.

• Are people finding my Site with major search engines? Which ones mostly?
• How many people are visiting my Site and Blog?
• How much time are they spending there?
• Which website pages are they spending most of their time on?
• Which of my website pages get the least amount of visits?

Google Analytics gives you a detailed look at your Website Visitors and Traffic Sources with reports that you can filter to your liking.

And it is very easy to get going with Google Analytics!

After a quick sign up procedure at Google, you’ll receive some HTML code to copy and paste to your website or blog.

This is the tracking code that will begin to generate your reports and help you craft more targeted copy -- and ultimately increase your website or blog traffic.

Google Analytics is an incredibly powerful application – and it is totally free of charge.

For more information about using Google Analytics, visit the GA help center at Google, and take a look at this informative video.

(If you are reading this post as an email and want to see the embedded video, simply click on the Post Title and visit our Blog directly).

What is an Email Signature?

An email signature is a block of text appended to the end of an email message often containing the sender’s name, address, phone number, disclaimer or other contact information.—Wikipedia

With most email clients, it is a piece of cake to automatically include your Email Signature at the end of each Email you send.

The trick is to make your “Siggy” informative and concise – instead of useless and lengthy!

Check out these 5 tips that can help you create a Professional Email Signature for your Small Business Email communications:

1. KISS.  Keep it simple.

Email works best when you stay away from HTML, colors, and special fonts. Believe it or not, plain old text is best.

2. Drop the multiple phone numbers and gazillion email addresses in your signature. Try one phone number, one fax number, and one email address. Simple!

3. It’s an email signature, so there is no need to write a novel to recipients of your emails.

The following three or four line Email Signature Format  is considered standard:

• First Line: Your Name | Your Title | Your Company Name
• Second Line: Your Phone Number | Your Fax Number
• Third Line: Your Website URL | Your Blog URL
• Fourth Line: Your Email Address | Twitter and/or Facebook Info (only if appropriate)

4. Make one Email Signature for initial emails and one for email replies.

In other words, make a short version, and a shorter version.

5. Instead of using hyperlinks to your Website, Blog, and Email, type out the full URLs.

Why? Sometimes links don’t go through as expected! (Ask me how I know!)

So you have been hearing a lot about Wordpress, and you want to know what all the fuss is all about.

WordPress is a blog publishing application and content management system.

As of September 2009, Wordpress is used by 62.8 million websites in the US and 202 million websites worldwide.—Wikipedia

What Is A Blog?

This is a Blog!

A Blog is just a type of website that is frequently updated with articles (“posts”) on topics that the Blogger wants to write about.

Wordpress is one of the most popular Blogging applications, and it is available in two different versions:

• The Wordpress.com version
• The Wordpress.org version

Both versions use the same FREE Blogging Software.

Wordpress.com

Wordpress.com is the version I call the “newbie” version.

If you are an absolute Beginner Blogger, this would be the version I would recommend to you because it is so easy to set-up and use.

Additionally your Blog is hosted for free by Wordpress.

Free and Free. What’s not to love?

The major drawbacks of this version?  You will not be able to monetize your Blog directly with advertisements and Banners, and customization of your Blog is extremely limited.

But if your goal is to set up a quick hobby, family, or even a simple business Blog – you can do it easily with Wordpress.com

There is nothing for you to buy – just set up an account and BLOG!

Wordpress.org

Wordpress.org is the version I call the “professional” Wordpress.

It is referred to as the “self-hosted” version – because you will need to find a Web Host for your Blog.

You will also need to register your own Domain Name.

However, you will also have much more control over your Blog!

With the .org version you will be able to:

• Upload & Customize Various Blog Themes
• Add Plug-Ins and Custom Widgets
• Monetize your Blog with Advertisements
• Alter your Blog in any way imaginable!

If you will be using your Blog as a way for you to make money online with Google Adsense or other forms of advertising – you will need the self-hosted version of Wordpress (the .org version).

Then you will need to set-up your Hosting account and install the software on your Host Server.

I’ll show you how to do this in later posts.

For tips on making money with your Blog, visit ProBlogger.net.

Afterwards, you can get ideas for your Blog by browsing tons of them at BlogCatalog.com.