I spend a lot of time speaking with new affiliates and bloggers hoping to earn ad revenue on their blogs and as a result I decided to focus some of my posts on the “Internet terminology’ every publisher (and blogger) needs.

Today ‘s Internet Geek Terminology choice is:

BOUNCE RATE

Where you will see this term ? In your traffic stats .

What is it ? This is a term of measurement that defines the percentage of initial visitors to your website (or blog) who ‘bounce’ away from your site instead of clicking through to a second page within your site.

Example A

Susie lands on your website and sees a second blog post (or page) that she likes – she clicks another blog post to open it and read. Susie is NOT a bouncer

Example B

George lands on your newest blog post and starts reading – George sees a banner for hot girls in your side bar and clicks it. George goes to look at hot girls (and to download spy-ware and Trojans to his site.) George IS a bouncer. (Of course you don’t have those banners on your site it was just a hypothetical example.

What are other ways a person can  ‘bounce’ off their initial visit ?
A visitor can bounce by:

• Typing a new url into their browser.
• Clicking a link on your page to a different website
• Closing the browser window or tab
• The session timing out (inactivity)

So how to you determine your blogs bounce rate ?

Bounce Rate = Total Number of Visits Viewing Only One Page / Total Number of Visits`

What is a good bounce rate?

Pick a card, because it’s not a black and white answer.  You have to KNOW the purpose of every page to determine what a good bounce rate is for any page. If you PURPOSE is to get a visitor to click through to an affiliate offer or ad then you want a high bounce rate. If the purpose si to engage the user into registering for your site then you want a low rate.

Generally an AVERAGE bounce rate rate is between 45- 60 %.

When considering your revenue goals for your blog you need to be realistic about the amount of work involved to get to that revenue goal. The site mentioned in our discussion was started in 2001. That is nine full years of building organic traffic to her site.

Some more info on the blog:
Google PageRank: 6
Alexa Rank: 12,638
Google BackLinks: 7,050
Yahoo BackLinks: 1,337,267

Today’s question for bloggers. Take a top performing blog with a similar audience to yours and compare it to your blog. This should help you set some goals around promoting your blog.

Here are a few handy tools to do so:
1) PopURI
2) Google Trends
3) Market Leap
4) Spy Fu
5) Attention Meter
6) Ranking.com
7) Alexa
Way back Machine - look at the blog over the years.

There are two things I am looking for in a WordPress plugin to help me integrate YouTube videos onto the Her Media Social Media and Blogging Blog. (I am beginning to think that my blog’s descriptive title is a tongue twister.)

1.) A player that displays YouTube video easily into any WordPress side bar using a widget AND to any WordPress post or page.

2.) A way to randomly present any of my favourite YouTube video resources to share with readers. So you aren’t seeing the same ‘features’ video each time you stop by.

The YouTube WordPress Plugin I am sharing with you today is Smart YouTube. It’s genius.

A few features I REALLY like:

• Being able to create borders and the players appearance to match your blog
• Ability to stream a playlist from YouTube
• Being able to size the player to fit sidebars
• Being able to display High Def Video

Smart YouTube lists their WordPress plugin’s features as;

• “Embed YouTube videos with ease
• Embed YouTube playlists
• Supports latest high quality video protocols (360p and HD quality 720p)
• Allows full YouTube customization (colors, border, full screen…)
• Supports video deep linking (starting at desired point with &start=time parameter, use &start=num parameter)
• Works on iPod and iPhone
• Provides a sidebar widget for videos as well
• Produces xHTML valid code
• Very fast and light, no extra scripts needed”

Link to WordPress Plugin Directory for Smart YouTube WordPress Plugin

Here is my First Youtube PlayList using the Smart YouTube plugin for WordPress:

httpvp://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=CB4D7B9BE30BE60F

Our free online Twitter how to workshop runs once a month and we are taking names for the March Twitter workshop, though only three spaces are left.

If you are beyond the basics feel free to complete the form and let us know what you need to know about twitter and we just may cover your concerns in a blog post or future class.

The next free online twitter workshop is Tuesday March 17th, 2009 and is limited to 15 participants.

I am working on my children’s school parent advisory website (of course its going to be Word Press) and I found this great little plug in;

Post Notification by Moritz Strübe (if you are using WordPress’ plug in uploader search tags for ‘notification’).

As with any emailer, be sure to check with your hosting provider to be sure you are familiar with any limits the place on email sends before using the plug in. Or use the WordPress Mail SMPT plugin.  Our pac website shouldn’t have too many subscribers since the school has less then 300 students so with some adjustments in my settings it appears to be working ok.

If your template supports captcha, you can keep the bots away as well.

Users can then select notifications based on the categories that interest them.

You can also easily customize the email and template pages.

The one feature I hope to see in the future is the ability to create a daily or weekly digest as individual emails will likely become over whelming for subscribers. Keep this in mind. If you are a really active blogger you may want to hold off until they offer a digest option.

I will keep testing this plugin for a few weeks on this one blog and report any bugs I encounter.

If you need help managing this or any other Word Press plugin consider hiring me …

Today I finally used the Add New Plugin feature. I have been wanting to test out a plug in to help me organize my Blog Post Ideas and decided to get it uploaded this evening.

The plug in was already downloaded onto my desktop, though I wanted to try out the integrated page that allowed you to search for a plug in.

My attempt to search by author did not locate the plug in at Word Press, so I stopped by the Official WordPress Plugins Repository to locate the plug in myself to locate the tags used to describe the plug in.

Once the plug in was located within the search result, a quick click to ‘install’ the WordPress Plugin resulted in an error.

I quickly discovered that if you are having errors when using any of the ad a plug in features. You likely need to disable and remove the Word Press Automatic Upgrade Plug in. So once deactivated I gave it another try ….

The window popped up, I clicked install and the plug in was uploaded unpacked and installed within seconds.

I am ecstatic about the fact that I do not have to open my FTP program to upload plugins ! This is one of the BEST new features of WordPress 2.7.

So if you have a list of plug ins you planned to upload. You may want to bump the task up your To do list. The process is faster, easier, and a snap with WordPress 2.7′s new plugin management features.

Step one go to furl and register (right click and open in a new tab) of course this would be much easier if you were using Fire Fox you are using firefox right ?

Remember to use the SAME user name on all your social media related accounts so others can find you.

You will need to validate your email address before proceeding. Once validated you will be offered the ability to either download the toolbar or simply drag and drop the Furl button into your bookmark toolbar.

I have limited toolbar space so I suggest the button. If you find that you enjoy using furl and gain exposure or a positive experience then consider the toolbar in the future.

Next step: Go to your account settings and complete them http://www.furl.net/settings  (note to furl in case you read this- really just include this as a step in the registration it is a pain to have to go looking for them or to accidentally miss completing them)

Next Step: Go to your account preferences :http://www.furl.net/settings

Before you go further click the Furl button below and Furl this post This will give you an example of how others will rate your site.

Now we want to get some Furl buttons on your Blog so others can bookmark and rate your blog.

In the navigation bar select Tools and drop down to Add Furl It! Button to your Website.

Paste the code into your Blog template. As you can see above this code appears to also work inside a Word press post.

Note: You can also include furl it bookmarks into your blog if you are looking for some content. However I do not suggest this unless you become a very active Furl it user.

To do so  select Tools and drop down to Add Furled Bookmarks to Your Site.

Next Step: Consider importing your bookmarks. Note I said CONSIDER. If you have any bookmarks you don’t want people seeing – then skip this step

Next Step: Using Furl In a new tab visit a couple of your favourite bloggers and use the Furl It link in your tool bar to review and bookmark the sites (you may need to DISABLE your pop up blocker)

Once done select ‘your user name’s Furl’ and drop down to My Archive where you will now see the two sites you “Furled” appear.

You have completed registering at Furl It. There are some interesting features on Furl it such as subscriptions and groups, however at this time the group membership levels are pretty low.

If you have a passion for a certiain topic you may want to start a group.

I will cover a few of the other Furl It feature how tos in the future.

Be sure to go to http://www.lijit.com and update your accounts to include your new Furl It account.