One of Google Analytics long-requested features is the ability to analyze the data people type into the “site search” search box. Finally, Google has delivered.

This new feature allows you to find out all kinds of data about your customers. It allows you to get into their heads, figure out what they’re looking for and better provide exactly what they want to find.

Here are a few of the main reasons why you should have site search in Google Analytics.

See What People Are Looking For

What are people who come to your website actually looking for?

Let’s say you run a website about solopreneurs. You cover a wide range of topics, but it’s very hard to tell what people who land on your site are actually looking for.

With the site search analytics, however, you can quickly figure it out. For example, if you track your searches you might find out that most people are really interested in how market their business using social media. You can then gear your site more to that angle.

See What People Search For … Again

Let’s say someone searches your site and doesn’t find what they’re looking for. What do they search for next?

This can tell you even more about your customer. For example, let’s say someone types in a search term about how to create a YouTube video. If they don’t find it, their next term is about videos in general.

That can tell you they’re really just interested in creating videos. But if the second term is then on lighting and sound tips, then you might glean that your visitors are interested in creating videos that look professional.

See What’s Returning No Results

When someone searches for content on your website, how often do they turn up no results? What queries are people searching for that get no results?

If you can identify common searches people type in where you’re showing no results at all, that’s a simple and easy way to improve the customer experience.

You know what people are looking for and not finding. Create that content and your user satisfaction will go up right away.

See What Group of People Are Most Likely to Search

Is your PPC (pay per click) traffic more likely to do a site search than your SEO traffic? What about returning visitor versus new visitors?

This can tell you a lot about what kind of people are coming to your website. For example, if you’re getting a lot of site searches, that probably means people are seeing your site as an encyclopedia-type website.

On the other hand, if you have a low search rate from all but one segment of traffic, that could mean that that one segment of traffic is having trouble finding what they’re looking for. After all, most people don’t see your site as an encyclopedia, but one group in particular is trying to use the search box to find what they’re looking for.

These are some of the many benefits of the site search in Google Analytics. It’s not the most important metric of all, but it’s absolutely a metric you should be paying attention to.

Don’t you just love technology? A few short years ago it really wasn’t possible to run your business from your phone. Now you can do almost anything with the help of applications for your iPhone.

Writing/Editing

There are a number of apps that let you view and edit documents directly from your smartphone. One of the most popular is called Documents to Go. It lets you view and edit documents right on your phone.

You can also find text-based writing tools like PlainText and iA Writer that are inexpensive and easy to use.

Desktop Communication

You can use the GoToMyPC app to connect to your work computer. This makes it easy to access your work files directly. No need to plan ahead. You can also use Apps like Dropbox and CloudTalk to share and store information that is accessible both from your computer and your smartphone.

Communication

With Skype you can have voice chats (and video chats if your device has a camera) with customers and contractors.

You can also use dictation applications like Dragon and QuickVoice to record your thoughts or create business content or documents.

Payment and Invoicing

PayPal offers an easy to use payment application that lets you send invoices and manage your account from your smartphone. Many banks also offer applications that let you manage your account from your phone. Intuit, the makers of Quicken and QuickBooks also have a payment processing application called GoPayment that you can use on your smartphone.

Blogging

Like to blog on the go? Check out the WordPress application that makes it easy to write, edit and publish blogs from your smartphone.

Social Networking

There are myriad applications to manage your social networking for both Facebook and Twitter. You can post pictures, comments, and stay in touch with your friends from just about any mobile device. Check out Friendly and the iTunes Facebook app for Facebook. Check out the HootSuite application for Twitter.

Organization

Last but definitely not least are the wide number of organization and brainstorming applications that you can find to not only grow your business but also to manage it from your phone. Check out MindNode for mind mapping applications. Evernote and One Note are both fantastic note taking, clipping, and organizational tools.

And don’t forget the basics. You can access your Google accounts with Google applications which means you can check your AdSense earnings, analytics and of course you can check your email too.

Smartphone applications make owning and operating a business easier than it has ever been before. You can network, invoice, pay bills, brainstorm, publish content and launch new products – all from your phone.

Most word processing software programs don’t come cheaply. Even the most commonly used, MS Word comes at a hefty price tag if it wasn’t preinstalled on your computer. If you’re looking for a top-notch word processing software that is absolutely free, don’t look any further than Google Docs.

Google Docs is Google’s answer to a web based documents system. To use the software all you have to do is have a Gmail account or go to http://docs.Google.com and register for a Google account. It’s absolutely free. In addition to word processing, you can create spreadsheets, forms, and presentations.

Once at the Google Docs website the rest is easy.

Step #1

Click on the Create button in the upper left hand corner.

Step #2

Choose the type of document you want to create. If you’re familiar with Excel, MS Word, and PowerPoint, these document types will look and feel familiar.

Step #3

Once you’ve made your document choice a new document will open. If you have chosen to create word processing document you’ll see the same type of toolbar at the top of the page. You can format your content the same way you would a Word document. You can choose your font type, size, and formatting. You can justify the page right or left, highlight, list items, and include text links.

Step #4

After you have created your document, the final step is to save it and here’s one of the ways where utilizing Google documents really pays off. You’ll save your document as a Google document. It won’t really ask you how you want to save your document. And it will store the document in a main folder or you can create sub folders, this allows you to label and organize them how you see fit. Whenever you sign into your Google or Gmail account you will have access to all of your Google documents.

Step #5

If you want to export the document and store it on your desktop or hard drive all you have to do is click on the file menu and choose “download as” from the pop up list. There you will see that you have the option to download the document as HTML, Open Office, Text, Word, RTF or PDF. That means if you’re sending the document to someone who uses MS Word, you can download it as a word doc and send it to them quickly and easily.

Step #6

Here’s the final reason Google documents is a great resource, you can share your documents by simply clicking the word “Share” in the upper right hand of the document toolbar. There you will see you have a number of options including sending a link to the document to a person, emailing the documents to a person or persons, inviting people to view the document or publishing as a web page. This makes collaboration very simplistic.

Google documents is one resource that makes creating, editing and sharing documents quick and easy and perhaps best of all, it’s extremely user friendly and it’s free.

Conducting keyword research is likely to make up a large part of your online activities. You’ll need to know what keyword you’re targeting for every blog post, article, squeeze page, and sales page you write. You need keywords for anchor text, blog commenting, and domain names. Finding them is easy but keeping track of them can be a little daunting. That’s where keyword research tools can help make your business easier.

Google’s free keyword research tool is perfect for discovering new keywords you might not have considered, comparing the viability of hundreds of keywords at a time, and judging the commercial intent of your chosen keywords. What it lacks, however, is tracking.

For example, once you’ve chosen your keyword, written your blog post, and done some backlinking to help it rank better in the SERPs, you may want to keep track of how you’re post is performing. That’s where paid tools like Market Samurai can help.

Market Samurai allows you to enter your URL and keywords, and will tell you where your site ranks for each keyword you choose. It also keeps track of this data so you can watch trends and make sure your efforts are working. Finding your site’s rankings can also be accomplished via free tools like SEO Book’s Rank Checker, or simply by searching yourself, though that will take more time than simply tracking it via a paid tool.

Another important component of the Market Samurai tool is the ability to see a visual representation of the competition for any given keyword. Using a complex algorithm, Market Samurai evaluates the top-ten websites for your chosen keyword and produces a color-coded chart that allows you to see at a glance whether you will have an easy time ranking for that word, or if you’ll need a PhD in SEO to land on the first page of the SERPs (SERPs = Search Engine Results Pages).

For business owners, it’s probably best to use free tools to manually discover keywords and track your site’s performance. Doing so will ensure you have a good understanding of the theory behind the paid tools, and will help keep you from becoming overwhelmed with all the information available to you. Once you have a thorough understanding of keywords, how they’re used, and what actions on your part have an effect on your site’s rankings, using a paid tool like Market Samurai can greatly increase the speed of being found on Google and make your business easier.

Keyword Research

In all of Internet marketing, one bit of advice is repeated again and again – do your keyword research. But to a solopreneur, an adventure into the mystical land of keywords often ends in confusion and frustration. Fortunately, learning how to do keyword research is quite easy.

First, understand what keywords are. Simply put, a keyword (or key phrase) is the term an Internet user types into their search engine of choice when they’re looking for the answer to a question. If they want to know how to create a Powerpoint Presentation, they might type in “Powerpoint Presentation” or “how to create a PowerPoint Presentation” or “creating Powerpoint Presentations.” These are all keywords.

Next, you need to find out which is the best keyword for your purpose. This can depend on a lot of factors, but most commonly you’ll want to know how many people, on average, search for that exact term. Optimizing your page for the term “bad Powerpoint Presentations” won’t earn you a bit of traffic if no one ever searches for that term.

There are a variety of tools available for conducting keyword research in prices ranging from free to several hundred dollars per month. While the paid tools are able to do many fancy calculations like analyzing your potential competition and discovering the number of backlinks your page has, the free tools are more than adequate for initial keyword research. One of the most popular is Google’s own keyword research tool, which you can find here: www.adwords.google.com/keywordtool

To begin your keyword research, simply type your basic keyword into the box marked word or phrase, enter the captcha code (the anti-spam code), and click search. Google will present you with a list of words and phrases related to your chosen keyword. Clicking on the various headings will sort your list accordingly. If you want to find the keywords with the highest number of searches locally (local in this case is your country), click “Local Monthly Searches” and the list will sort itself.

For basic keyword research, you can ignore the column labeled “competition” as that is relevant only when choosing keywords for an Adwords campaign. It has nothing to do with keyword competition. You should, however, change your search preference from “broad” to “exact” in the left column. In a later post I’ll explain the difference, but for now just be aware that exact match means what it says, while broad match can be quite misleading.

Learning how to do keyword research is important for everyone who has a presence on the Internet, but it doesn’t have to be complicated or cumbersome. In most cases, simple keyword research using free tools is adequate.

Tablet sales are sweeping the country. Best Buy has confirmed that since the iPad came out, laptop PC sales have dropped by over 40%. Over 15 million iPads have already been sold, with many more to come in the future. If you want to stay ahead of the curve, getting your website tablet ready is now a necessity.

Here’s how to get your website tablet ready.

Make Your Buttons Larger

Buttons that are easy to click can be very hard to press on with a finger. Remember that a mouse pointer is only a few pixels wide, but someone who needs to click on something with their finger is often much less precise.

Small buttons are frustrating for tablet users. Enlarge the buttons on your site so it’s easier for tablet users to use.

Use CSS to Make Your Width Fluid

Rather than using a fixed width, which looks very strange on the tablet, go for a fluid width CSS layout.

This allows the CSS to adapt the page width to whatever device is displaying it. If it’s on a large screen laptop PC, it’ll expand its width. If it’s on the small width iPad, the CSS will shrink the width down without distorting the website.

On WordPress? Get the OnSwipe Plug-In

If your site is hosted on WordPress, then get the OnSwipe plug-in to make your site tablet friendly.

OnSwipe is a plug-in already used by 18 million blogs, with integration features that make it easy for tablet users to view and use the website.

Cut the Flash

Unfortunately, Apple has decided not to support Flash on both iPads and iPhones. If you have a flash-based website or a website that has Flash incorporated in it, chances are your website won’t display properly on the tablet.

Flash has traditionally been quite a slow media and has had other disadvantages as well, such as not being able to be spidered by search engines. If you want to be tablet friendly, now might be the time to cut the Flash from your site.

Test It!

Finally, get an iPad and test out your new website version. What’s the user experience like? What do you like and what do you find frustrating?

Make any changes you need to make, then have a few friends and associates test it out on the iPad as well. Continue this process of refinement until you’re happy with your new, tablet-friendly website.

Many readers have heard me talk about NAMS, the BEST internet education there is.

Get ready for BIG news – NAMS just got 10 TIMES better.  And even more affordable!

With all the pieces of this training now, there is no way to describe it other than “Online Business University”.

Here’s the NAMS story:

There have been four sessions of NAMS as a weekend educational workshop.  Now the founder, David Perdew, has realized there’s an even better way to help even more people: make the learning ongoing with accountability and continued access to the brilliant minds of the trainers.

Here’s the new package:

3 day virtual workshop on January 14^th to 16^th

More live training events the following week

Webinar recordings of all the workshop sessions

Instructor training sessions from January to August

Accountability groups

Workshop homework and tasks with Instructor follow-up

Internet Marketing Guidebook

Audios from all previous NAMS events (150 hours of recordings)

2 or more types of online business software

AND….

Attendance at the NAMS6 Live Workshop in Atlanta on August 18-21st!!!

Here’s the amazing price:

$297 through December 31, 2010 ONLY

That’s a bargain price for ONE weekend of this type of info – you’ll get lots more.

With the New Year, you can expect the price to increase in $100 increments.

Act now so you get the best price.  You will be sorry if you wait!

This is a wonderful and powerful change.  What I see repeatedly with business owners is that they learn something, but fail to implement.  This format will walk you through implementation with support and continued information with webinars, workshops, assignments and instruction for a full 6 months.  I love this!

All for one price – including the opportunity in August to meet LIVE with your instructors.  You’ll get clarification of tough points, ask your detailed questions, learn even more and have a chance to plan for your next steps.  This is business building at its best.

I hope you decide to expand your business through this powerful education.  Did I mention there are 5 levels of training in Atlanta so you will get the information that is right for YOUR business?  I’ll be there learning right alongside you and looking forward to meeting you in person in August. Don’t miss out on this opportunity – grab your ticket to NAMS now.

Aligning with your highest self and living a conscious life is much like losing weight… the last little bit can be the hardest. Why is that?

When it comes to living a conscious life, the last 10% of “waking up” can be the most challenging because it’s that 10% where your deepest, most sneaky and self-sabatoging patterns and deepest wounds come to the surface for purification and healing. When you are 90% conscious/90% aligned with the truth of who you are, you can still get away with a lot of stuff. You can pretend you don’t see something that you know isn’t right. You can let your ego take you for a ride and believe it’s really your highest self speaking (when it’s not). You can convince yourself you are doing “good enough” and don’t have to excavate the last 10% because everything is OK… but it’s not really, is it?

How do I know? Because it’s been my personal experience. I lived at 90% consciousness and let it be “enough” for many years… I jokingly call myself the “unconscious” conscious entrepreneur because 10% of me was asleep and is in the process of waking up now.

But, the last 10% of seeing what you need to see about yourself and how you live your life, make your choices, and show up in the world is the BEST! It can be scary, but it’s the last 10% that also bring the most freedom, fulfillment, joy, and ease to your life. It’s well worth the effort to do bring yourself from 90% to 100% alignment… the final 10% changes everything!

Christine Kloser is the publisher and is a contributing author to Align, Expand and Succeed; Shifting the Paradigm of Entrepreneurial Success. This “just released” book is based on the premise that the world is changing at a very rapid pace. We are starting to see that cooperation brings better results than old style competition. It’s a new era and we need to work together to create success for everyone, not just for a few.

This book features dozens of conscious entrepreneurs who share their wisdom, expertise, stories, lessons and insights about the new and exciting shifts that are happening for entrepreneurs worldwide.

This book is designed to raise the vibration of the planet like never before. Get your copy of Align, Expand and Succeed and enjoy an abundance of gifts with your purchase, but only if you get the book today! Plus as a bonus for purchasing Align, Expand and Succeed, you can download my special never-released-before workbook, transcript and .mp3 titled, Your Guide to Conquering The Fear of Marketing.

Hurry! Facebook 4 Biz: Ready, Set, Go! starts this Thursday, October 14th and there are ONLY 6 seats left!

Here’s what you’ve been looking for…

Clear, accurate information on how to market YOUR business on Facebook!

Learn now and get going with results!

Those 500 million Facebook members include YOUR potential customers.  They are looking for products and services like yours.  NOW is the time to learn the effective ways to use Facebook as a marketing tool for your business.

Facebook 4 Biz: Ready, Set, Go is exactly what you need to walk you step by step through how to start and manage a powerful presence on Facebook.  Five plus hours of webinar instruction will demonstrate each of the important elements.  A bonus hour of questions and answers will make sure that YOU understand!

In a brief 4 week period you’ll learn:

• 5 business tools of Facebook.
• All about Profiles, Pages, Groups, News Feed, Friends, Fans, Community Pages.
• Step by step instructions for setting up a business page and customizing it.
• Ways to address privacy issues and how to separate personal and business information.
• Developing a Facebook marketing strategy to anchor your activity there.
• How to utilize the viral aspects of Facebook for maximum business exposure.
• Details of tagging, ads, search, importing your blog, events and so much more!

Here are the class details…

Dates: October 14, 21 and 28 and bonus call on November 4, 2010

Times: 4:00-5:30pm ET

Format: Webinar

Cost: Over 5 hours of instruction and Q & A for $149

Facebook 4 Biz is for you, whether you are brand new to Facebook marketing or just haven’t had the results you need with what you have done to date.  Get rolling to success with the most powerful online marketing tool of all – Facebook.  Know for sure what works and what does not!

Don’t hesitate!  The class begins very soon so register NOW!

I recommend 1ShoppingCart

Having a good checkout process can be the difference between making a sale and not. You’ve done all that work to get the customer to click the order button. So the last thing you want to do is have an unsecure page that causes them not to trust you and leave.

On the internet, security is very important to customers. If they don’t feel like they can trust you site, they won’t buy.

And the other variable is clarity. If the shopping cart has too many steps involved, they will also leave. Customers are not willing to jump through a lot of hoops to buy your product. You want to make everything as easy as possible. Here are a few tips to improve your security and ease of use:

1. Have a single page checkout system

One of the main reasons this works is that it’s quick. All the customer has to do is provide their contact and payment information, click the order button, and then get the product.

Most single page systems can be completed in under 60 seconds. The faster they can finish the order, the less chance there is of them changing their mind.

A lot of sites have discovered that single page systems result in quite a few more sales. Some businesses have experienced spikes of more than fifty percent in conversions from incorporating a one-page system. So this is not just conjecture. That’s not to say it definitely will work, but it’s worth testing.

2. Make the shopping cart clear

Be sure the page has big and readable font, and marks all the fields clearly so the customer knows exactly what to type in.

3. Use testimonials

Putting testimonials on the checkout page often boosts conversions. It shows your prospect that others have bought from you and had a good experience. You can never have too many testimonials.

4. Emphasize security

Right alongside the email address, you might want to contain a link that states something to the effect that “you take their privacy seriously”. Then link to your privacy policy.

Also, have the final order button say something about a “secure order”. This is the moment of truth, and you want to be sure they don’t back out because your site is not secure.

If you can make your shopping cart user friendly and secure, people will buy from you. This is one of the simplest and easiest ways to increase your profits.