I've done quite a bit of research into web analytics lately, and I have found a couple of things. Google analytics Is a great tool, but it cannot be the only tool an organization relies on. Because it is a purely JavaScript based, it is unable to catch browsers that do not have JavaScript enabled, this includes the search engine robots, some hand held devices, as well as a percent of users that manually turn this off. That being said we need a tool to parse the log files from the server and to give us information about these users, as well as providing us with "on demand" stats where as Google's stats are next day. The server logs also contain a wealth of other information that we are collecting automatically, so we might as well take advantage of it.

I have come to the conclusion that we need to use Google Analytics but we also need a tool that reads the server logs. There are quite a variety of tools that would fill this need. Google recently purchased Urchin who's web analysis product runs Google analytics, costs about $3k and will work with the Google Mini, Urchin also gives the ability to read logs from server software other than IIS (like apache, the software used for open source applications) .

Urchin will be releasing another version shortly, and this will be the first release since the Google buyout. Another option is WebTrends Analytics it costs about $4k. It Like Urchin will read both IIS and Apache logs, and has a web interface for users. The last product is NetTracker, it runs about $4k for the software, and another grand for support. it was recently bought out by Unica. The administration of netTracker is not the smoothest, and the support seems to have declined on quality since the buy out.

In order to truly profit from the internet, one needs a website. There are many programs available that offer free websites but these will not bring about the profit that most people truly desire. What makes the free websites so unsavory is their cookie cutter appearance. All these websites are exactly alike visually and most carry the same content.

Original content is what sells best on the internet. For this reason, potential internet marketers should make their initial investment in a domain name. Before selecting a domain name, however, research must be conducted to determine the best items to sell.

The way that search engines find websites is with their keywords. By selecting a domain name that is laden with keywords, that site will be more highly indexed by the web crawlers. For this reason, a product needs to be selected in order to appropriate the best domain name for that product.

After a product has been selected and a domain name purchased, content needs to be added to the site. Make sure to use appropriate headers that are short, sweet, and full of keywords. Make the site user friendly and visually pleasing.

Products should be on the site next. As stated in the beginning, original content is best. However, developing your own content can incur cost and time. If just starting out, you can sell other people's product to get your business started.

After products are placed, make sure to make your site viral by placing a tell-a-friend feature on the site. This will help to drive more traffic to the site with little effort on your part. Also add an email capture function, and forum if possible. The email capture will help to build a list of potential customers whether you have made a sale to them yet or not. The forum option will bring repeat visitors to the site.

These are just a few ways to make your site successful and profitable.

Content is a vital component of any website or any marketing/advertising tool, for that matter. However, this was realized only lately that it is important to have good content on the website. Earlier, having a website meant designing visually creative pages. Importance of content was always ignored and it was just thought of as placing some text in between various pieces of graphics. However, with the advent of search engines, importance of content gained prominence. The advantages of having good content finally started receiving its long due significance. With the importance of content growing for websites, the need for web site content management systems has also increased.

There are various factors that bring the importance of web site content management under prime consideration.

• Putting relevant quality content on the website will clearly define the objective of the website and convey the business/company/product profile.
• A website with good content will have visitors spending more time on it and returning to the site often.
• Having properly structured niche content will increase the website's credibility and may help in converting a visitor into a potential customer.
• Content with adequate number of keywords will make the website search engine optimized, thus improving its visibility on search engine results.
• Other websites will want to link to quality content rich website. This will increase the number of referral visitors to the website and also its exposure to search engines thereby increasing the overall popularity of the website.

Having understood the importance of content, it is also essential to know the web site content management process. There are various ways of getting good content. You can write the required content yourself and get it tweaked from a professional editor or you can directly hire a professional content writer. However, before doing the above steps of directly writing the content or getting it written, the objectives for having a proper content should be clearly defined. This could include making decisions about:

• Target audience with relevant demographics, if applicable.
• Length of the content and its structure.
• Specific words that need to be used and number of times they should occur in the entire content.
• Distribution of the content over the website.
• Frequency of updating the content.
• Use of appropriate web site content management system.

A website with tidy, crisp, and persuasive content will definitely have lot of visitors hitting the site regularly. No matter how multimedia rich and flashy your website is, rich content is now a mandatory requirement for the survival of your website.