SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING & WEBSITE ANALYSIS SERVICES

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Cogentis Website Analysis and Web Site Log Analysis Services.

Cogentis offers website analysis and web site logfile interpretation and reporting services, as an important 'backroom' process strengthening our website marketing strategies and deliverables. After all - we need to firstly ascertain whether or not the foundations of your website are solid - before we drive more business to your site! Many Marketing Directors, Marketing Managers, and Product Managers get delivered 'snow jobs' by their IT Departments when they ask questions like 'how come, since you guys upgraded our website with that new system last August, our sales reps stopped getting website sales leads?'. We can answer those questions, by analysing your site structure and technology - and generally tell you even more if you let us analyse your webserver log files.

The first stage in our website analysis process is to ascertain whether there are technical hinderances which will, by their nature, hinder or prevent search engine spiders from being able to access, and index, your website. There are many technical reasons why a website can't be seen/ won't rank in search engines. These range from e.g. use of scripting/ movie/ 'cool grapical' technologies for site navigation, to inappropriate uses of content management systems, security systems and development technologies. More often than not, where sites are 'updated' or 'rebuilt' in such a way as to both suddenly, and 'accidentally' preclude access by search engine spiders - it is due to an inappropriate use of technology. Often - your web server log files will tell the story in minute by minute detail..... as your existing search listings turn into '404 page not found' error messages...

For example - some content mangement systems - with dynamic strings, and session ids in their URLS - aren't easily indexed by some search engines. Yet - many technologists, during the implementation of your new content management system - will take your search engine spider accessible, and currently indexed 'flat' HTML, or MS Word formatted '2004 press releases' and 'content manage' them for you - ensuring that many search engines will no longer index them! How often would you have needed to change and 'content manage' a '2004 press release' during 2006 or 2007?. When some technologists implement a site security system for secure ecommerce transactions, why do they also secure your 'about us' and product marketing pages behind the Port 443 https security device? Did that information really need to 'secured' too? Too often, that's what happens... and your sales referrals - from that previously indexed content which suddenly vanishes after an 'upgrade' - drops like a stone...

A Cogentis website analysis audit will review how your site is built, the technology that has been deployed, and testing to identify whether or not the site is accessible by search engine spiders. It will identify any technical reasons why the site isn't being/can't be spidered by search engines, and recommend any workarounds which may improve your situation.

For example, many search engine spiders will often 'choose' to not index complex URLs which pass numerous strings of variables, or arguements, each preceded by an ampersand and '?='. So often, spiderability of many dynamically generated (database generated) sites can be improved by converting from dynamically generated URLs to static URLS using a number of available products, depending on the webserver environment. The page content - the data "on the page" can be dynamically generated - but the 'unique address' indicating the location of that content - the page URL - should be rewritten to not contain references to questionmarks, session id variables etc.

Stage 2 of the Website Analysis Process is Logfile Analysis

Once we have reviewed your web site plaform technology, and conducted a search engine position analysis to ascertain inclusion and position, we can analyse your log files and see what has been really happening when visitors are on your site. After signing appropriate non disclosure agreements (if required), we can review your server logs, and perform a full web server log analysis. The presentation of the web site log analysis report will allow you to better understand the actual behaviour of visitors on your the site, where and how they navigate, and how to better see the issues they are currently facing. Many of the issues your visitors face are generally due to technological constraints.

The Cogentis web site server log analysis can also provide extensive information relating to pages visited, errors encountered (including 404 'page not found' errors - one of the most frustrating experiences for your prospective customers....), search engine referrals, search keyword phrases used and details of other referring URLs which led visitors to your site.

Being able to accurately measure the quantity of visitors you are getting from the leading search engines, as well as the most popular keyword phrases being used, ensures that we don't disrupt any current search and referral traffic patterns.

Our process is logical and cogent. Through our website analsysis service, we can ensure that your site is accessible, and hasn't penalised itself in search engines, by operating outside the Australian web-site accessibility legislation. The process also ensures that the technology deployed provides a solid commercial basis upon which to build and improve your search engine traffic.