EduCyber's Newsletter

In this Issue we look at how Google deals with hazardous sites, tips for large email inboxes, and five key statistics for web pages.

Google Doesn't Play Fair

Imagine, if you will, going to the doctor for an exam. After the exam, the doctor tells you the grave news that you must have an operation immediately, the exam results show a problem. But when you ask what the problem is, the good doctor gives you a medical book and says that your problem is definitely one of the problems in there.

That's pretty much what I feel like right now. Yesterday I was showing a potential client how to find my site in Google when I noticed a new link on the results that says "This site may harm your computer". Trying to go www.educyber.com brings up an intermediate page warning of hell and damnation if you do visit my site.

I've gone to Google and to the site they work with, www.stopbadware.org and I get messages saying "Read the guidelines" but no indication of why they have made it nearly impossible to get to my site. My only recourse is to go through page after page of guidelines to see if there is possibly something I have done to offend.

Don't get me wrong, I want to stop the bad guys and their nefarious schemes of installing spyware and trojans on computers. But Google's approach is to say "You're doing something wrong, stop it immediately."
and then not tell you what the problem is. Married guys have probably experienced the same frustration but this is effecting my bottom line!

Taming the Inbox: Managing Volumes of Email

I've done it! I've taken a huge step towards taming my inbox. For years it has had no fewer than 300 messages in it and when busy-ness hits, it regularly balloons to over 1500 messages.

Until now. What is the secret to taming your email? you may ask. The answer is so simple (once you know the answer it always seems simple):
Right now, as I write, I have 13 emails in my inbox. Each of them is something that will be dealt with within the next business day and then filed away.

When there were 300+ emails in there, it was so easy to let it balloon up to 400 or 600 or more. With 0 to 20 in there, its very easy to identify what needs to be done, do it and then file it. The biggest thing that worked for me was opening a Word document so that when I started through the laborious process of whittling down 1100 emails to 5, I could jot a note about something that needed to be done.

So, it worked like this: file, file, file, delete, file, delete, delete, oh, I need to call Frank about this one. Hmm should I quit working on filing which isn't fun or should I call Frank? This time I mastered the urge to bail and made a note to call Frank in the Word Document. Then back to file, delete, file, file, delete, delete, delete.

It took six to eight hours to do this but I finished over the weekend and this has been one of the most productive weeks I've ever had and its only Thursday!

So if you are stuck in email purgatory, set aside the time, ignore every distraction, and file, categorize and make notes until you're down to 0.
Right now I've got 9 items in my inbox, the oldest of which dates back to 5:20 PM on Tuesday. Ohh, that feels good.

5 Key Web Site Statistics

There are five key web site statistics that every web site owner should pay close attention to:

1.    How many visitors? People used to get all excited about hits but
you could easily have 100 hits from one visitor. The number of visitors though (usually tracked by unique IP addresses) gives you a really good idea of whether you're getting the kind of traffic you need.
2.    What pages are people looking at? If you don't know what's
popular on your site, you don't know how to make it better. If a page other than your home page is more popular, you might have managed to get it ranked well in the search engines - another good thing to know.
3.    What search engines are sending people to your site and how many
are they sending? With Google fielding around 75% of ALL searches, you typically get the most visits from Google. If you're not, you can learn why and determine whether that is a good thing or not.
4.    What terms people are searching for when they get to your site?
If you sell computers and find that people are searching for hair spray when they click through to your site, you've got a problem. If on the other hand, they are searching for motherboard, that is a good thing.
5.    What other sites are linking to your site? Google (and other
search engines) love it when other sites are linking to your site. So the more sites that link to you, the better - at least if they're the right kind of links.

You need to know these statistics to make informed decisions about your site. Do you know these?
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© 2008 EduCyber, Inc. This newsletter is brought to you by EduCyber, Inc. EduNotes can be viewed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week online at http://www.educyber.com/edunotes/ . Visit us on the web at http://www.educyber.com or call us at (303) 268-2245. Permission is hereby granted to redistribute all or part of this newsletter as long as this entire copyright message is included.