Article printed from SEO-News: http://www.seo-news.com
  HTML version available at: http://www.seo-news.com/archives.html

Is Top Search Engine Result Page Ranking Enough?
By Fred Black (c) 2007 Rank1 Website Marketing

You've worked hard at SEO. Your site has been creeping up page
by page and you finally get your site on the first page of Google
for your targeted keyword phrase. But you're disappointed with
the sparse amount of traffic you're receiving.... What should
you do now?

Here are some terms you must know to talk about search engine
placement:

SEO = Search Engine Optimization is the science and art of
getting a web page to rank well in the SERPs for a particular
Keyword.

SERP = Search Engine Results Pages are the pages that a search
engine returns when someone searches for something. You want
your web page to be at the top of the results vs. on the 100th
page. If not, no one will ever find you.

Keyword = the words or phrase that you want your site to rank
well for when people search for something. For example, if
you're selling brick zippers, then your keyword phrase would
probably be brick zippers.

Maybe you read my first paragraph and wondered how can that
happen? Everyone usually assumes that a web page on the first
page of results gets massive amounts of traffic. But that's not
always the case.

Below I've listed some of the reasons you may not receive the
traffic you counted on:

1) Your web page title and/or description are not humanly
readable and appealing. Perhaps you strung some words together
just to rank well with the search engines, but to a human it
just does not read well and therefore does not cause them to
click on the link to your site. Remember that a person reading
your web page is the end result you're wanting. Make your web
page titles and descriptions a call to action so that you will
motivate people to click, click, and click.

2) Your site is listed at or near the bottom of the first page
of search results vs. the top of the first page of search
results. The first site on the first page receives an order of
magnitude more clicks than the last site on the first page. The
closer your page is to the top, the more traffic you'll get.

3) You picked keywords that are not being searched on. You must
always research your keywords. It's too easy to think you know
what people are searching for when you could be wrong on what
the best terms are for your site. If you find this out months
into using those keywords, it's bad news. It's easy to edit your
web pages; but changing the inbound links to your web site can
be impossible. Why do you care about inbound links? Search
engines put a very high value on the anchor text in the links
to your site. Let's say you've spent months getting links to
your site using the term "Red Left-Handed Widgets" because when
you searched for "Red Left-Handed Widgets" on Google, it showed
944,000 results. Later, you finally use WordTracker and check
how many people search for "Red Left-Handed Widgets" and you
find that nothing shows up. Now, you need to find a better
keyword phrase that people ARE using when they search for
products or information like yours.

Here's a real example. I helped a blog owner with some SEO for
one of his sites. In this example, I've left out the site name
and keyword terms. For this example, I did the analysis using
the free version of WordTracker which only gives data from MSN,
the paid version gives much more data.

He is targeting 3 keyword phrases:

Keyword Phrase 1
Wordtracker showed 0 entries in its database, 0 predictions
for 24 hours
Google returned 2,490,000 sites
This site is on the 3rd page of results on Google (near the
top of the 3rd page) for this keyword.

Keyword Phrase 2
Wordtracker showed 23 entries in its database, 4
predictions for 24 hours
Google returned 77,100,000 sites
This site is on the 3rd page of results on Google (near the
top of the 3rd page) for this keyword.

Keyword Phrase 3
Wordtracker showed 21 entries in its database, 3
predictions for 24 hours
Google returned 67,100,000 sites
This site is on the 5th page of results on Google (near the
bottom of the 5th page) for this keyword.

Based on this quickly assembled data, I suggested that he had
selected the wrong keywords. I played around with WordTracker
and found a different mix of phrases that work much better.

The Keywords I suggested for him to use have these numbers:

Keyword #1
Wordtracker has 590 entries in its database and 94
predictions for 24hours
Google lists 397,000,000 sites

Keyword #2
Wordtracker has 12 entries in its database and 3
predictions for 24hours
Google lists 2,470,000 sites

Keyword #3
Wordtracker has 0 entries in its database, 0 predictions
for 24 hours
Google lists 2,490,000 sites

The first two phrases were new to him. He wasn't using them
before, and my suggested third phrase is actually his old number
one phrase. Even though this last phrase shows 0 results I want
to keep it in the mix because it's exactly what his site is
about. The first two phrases will bring in lots of traffic.

Note: I used the free version of WordTracker which only gives
data for MSN; the paid versions give figures for Google, Yahoo!,
and MSN. The number of predicted searches will be higher with
Google vs. MSN.

The Accuracy of the keywords you select is important. I'd rather
get a handful of interested site visitors than a thousand
uninterested visitors. Had I suggested keywords that were not
relevant to his site, visitors arriving at his site would not
stay long, and they would not purchase much of anything either.

In addition to my keyword changes, I suggested several things
that needed changing in the HTML for his web pages. It will take
a week or two, to see the resulting changes in the search engine
rankings. It'll take much longer to get links built using the
new keywords.

Summary:
Always pick keywords that are really being used. Your page needs
to rank near the top of the first page of results to get massive
traffic. Your web page topic must to be related to the keywords(s)
being used.

Suggestions:
Use a good keyword research tool such as WordTracker. Using a
service such as 3WayLinks.Net seems to work. (That's how he was
ranking on the 3rd page of results without any optimization to
his pages.)
================================================================
Written by Fred Black. Fred Black is an experienced programmer,
web site developer, Internet business operator, and systems
integrator. Visit his Internet Business web site,
http://www.pqInternet.com for Information to help you build a
successful Internet Business.
================================================================

Copyright © 2007 Jayde Online, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.

SEO-News is a registered service mark of Jayde Online, Inc.