Over the past week, I have taken one of my sites, and performed a pretty simple experiment. Like most bloggers, my main question when starting my blog was “How can I get traffic to it?”
I’m sure all bloggers ask this when they begin their blog. We want to be heard, or in this case read, so we strive to get people to our blog. Obviously there’s the well-known saying “content is king”. I agree, but wanted to test the waters on another theory I had brewing.
I’ve experienced some really good success getting search engine traffic from Google, mainly with my sites that are using WordPress. I will admit my themes have some degree of coding that is geared to be friendly to search engines, but this theory that kept begging me to explore finally was confirmed this past week.
Here’s what I did.
I took a handful of 3 or 4 word searches that I wanted to target. I created a post, with those 3 or 4 words as the first ones in the blog title. Then I wrote a fairly short (meaning 3 to 4 paragraph) post, making sure I repeated those words in order at least once in a paragraph.
The results.
Every search I went after I landed on the first page of Google within a few days. I can’t guarantee results, but I can share the success I had with my site. Best of luck, and leave comments with your experiments!
7 thoughts on “So You Want Search Engine Traffic, Huh?”
I have theory right now. Of course it’s just a theory which will probably remain unproven.
I don’t usually have to even write a post, just tag my articles with certain keywords.
I use Textpattern to run Holiday Pad and recently changed the way in which it was tagging stuff.
ifranky: Good point. Microformats, I believe, will be particularly useful in Yahoo Pipes. Add structure and semantics (for machines) to your content might then produce additional visitors in the future, especially if someone adds your feed to their Pipe/filter. Semantic search engines of the future will also love your Microformatted-content over other sites. This is just my opinion, but Semantic SEs can only really function best on structured content.
Keyword writing is an interesting experiment, but don’t overdo it. Using the keywords some times, and of course in the url and the h2 is great. It.works.
But be aware of the future : the algorithm is getting smarter and smarter and comes closer to understand English every day. Eventually keyword writing will drop down the list/SERP, especially if there are too many keywords present.
There is another factor we shouldn’t forget : when Google discovers a new entry (use Arne Bracholds Sitemap to ping Google with every update), you will automatically be ranked higher for the first days/weeks, but this isn’t your final ranking for that SERP. Time will rank you definitely, IMHO Google updates now every month the rankings… until the next smart blogger comes.
I see some of my RECENT top SERPs permanently change between #1 and #7. But finally they most of time end up back at #1. I’ll wait till after the next Google dance (but happily take the 4-5k visitors they have already sent me. 😀
Use tags for your keywords as well, they create another URL with the keyword, knowing that keyword=anchor text+URL (and also h2 on the tag page), the unbeatable #1/weight is for Google.
Generally you’ll notice that with a WP blog (older than 6 months/out of the sandbox) this trick works for any keyword/query with up to 2million results in Google.
More results? Trust Rank becomes the key. And age. Now that is where things get interesting. TR. 😀
But there is one more trick, one that is overseen very often. A trick which will hugely boost your TR. An undocumented tip. Especially for designers.
Microformats.
Just think about what MF are and it’ll explain everything.
Semantics for machines.
Optimize your valid theme even more for Google.
My experience has been that Google tends to favour certain sites. I guess I am lucky that my blog comes in that list for certain keywords.
I’ve noticed that certain posts where I point to other places of mine rank higher at times than the original place. It’s not just about targeting keywords, but also the reputation your site builds over time.
Brian,
I’ve found the same thing. One important ingredient though is to have a domain that’s established and authoritive.
A new domain will not yield the same results that you report here. That’s one of the reasons I prefer starting relevant subdomains rather than brand new domains.
Nonetheless, you are right. 3-5 word phrases in a title, with those same phrases repeated twice throughout a 2 paragraph post is the golden recipe.
You’re right, wordpress is like a magnet for search engines. Here’s a tip of my own:
Have a really unique name. Now, I’m talking about a name that exists on very few other websites. For instance, the name of my main blog is ‘BrainPrint’. Within two days, bang! Front page. This might also have to do with it being an attatchment to my main site… ‘Byetcomics’ heh.
Hope that helps some people.
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