Random Thoughts

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So far in my niche website building life, the search engines have not been kind. I get a trickle from Google, a little bit more from MSN and until recently, Yahoo was not in the picture at all. Now the tables have turned. Yahoo has finally started sending decent numbers of traffic to a few of my websites and I’m ranking #1 for a phrase that gets quite a few searches. Now if only I could be number one for that same phrase with Google - I’d be rich!

Even with the SE’s being less than kind, I have still managed to do pretty well in terms of sales. Over the summer months MSN was bringing in a bulk of the traffic and it helped me to increase 90% month over month, with no cost.

So you might be wondering what it is that I did to get Yahoo to come around and the answer make surprise you. I did nothing! Well, not exactly nothing. I’ve been building my sites for about 6 months now and Yahoo seems to have “flipped a switch” and turned the traffic on. It just showed up one day recently.

I know people constantly harp about Google killing BANS sites and other thin affiliate sites and this may give reason to panic if you earn your income from thin sites. For those that build quality websites with plenty of content, custom design and a good niche, no need to worry. Best case scenario; Google won’t touch your site. Worst case scenario; you get de-listed by G…BUT, there are other search engines out there. As long as your niche isn’t so obscure that it only receives 20 searches per month, then you will be fine with MSN and Yahoo traffic as it provides decent search volumes for many niches.

I love Google Analytics! Any serious webmaster or blogger knows the true value of a good statistics package. Without it, how can you monitor your traffic properly and adjust your activities accordingly? Although I like Google Analytics, I don’t believe it’s very accurate (at least for counting unique visitors), but it still has great features to really dig down and analyze your traffic.

Something that always fascinates me is studying the search terms used to find my blog. Here’s one that I found recently that underscores just how important it is to use keywords in our blog posts. Recently someone searched Google for “great thoughts on success to earn money” and my blog showed up on the search results. I’m not exactly sure how or why my blog showed up, but I’m happy that my site is being found by Google on a fairly regular basis. I haven’t had much success with other search engines except Google.

Something that seemed to help with search engine traffic is using Google’s Webmaster Tools and the Google Sitemap Wordpress Plugin.

1. Download the plugin and create a sitemap.

2. Once the plugin has created the sitemap.

3. Go to Google’s Webmaster tools and upload the sitemap that was automatically created by the plugin.

This helps Google to properly index your page and you’ll notice that the Googlebot returns often and hopefully you’ll start seeing some search engine traffic.

Using Google Trends, Google Blog Search and even Google News can be fascinating. These sites can take a rather unknown blog or website and make it an instant success. It seems that having just the right keyword in your blog posts and titles can bring some decent traffic. Just do a search on a name like “Ashley Dupre” or “Priscilla Presley” and you’re sure to find blogs that you may have otherwise never found. The author, just by placing a simple hot keyword in their post is now listed for the world to see.

So how do you get keywords into your blog posts without having it look obvious? You could do just what I did above, or you can try something like Ben Cook does on Blogging Experiment. Maybe it’s intentional and maybe it isn’t, but I’m sure it helps to bring in some traffic. Notice Ben’s use of TV show names like “Lost” and “The A-Team” and the names of A-List Bloggers such as “Darren Rowse” and “John Chow”. They blend into the story and make it interesting, as well as bring back some nostalgic thoughts for the reader (I loved the A-Team when I was 10!).

Making use of popular keywords is completely different from keyword stuffing. This is the practice of just placing keywords on your page (visible or most likely hidden) for no particular reason. You’ll notice this on pages that are built specifically for Adsense, with no real content. Even though Google has caught on to this practice and claims to give no value to these pages, I still manage to find some of these pages occasionally.

Using keywords to your advantage is something that takes practice.  Every time you sit down to write, keep in mind the topic of your post and the end result that you are trying to achieve with it.  Now think of ways that you can add keywords into the post without being obvious, all while staying on topic.  If you can balance the two properly, you will have a fascinating post and get some search engine traffic.

I monitor my stats closely and always look to see how people found my blog and what keywords the search engines picked up to get visitors to my site.  Many times I’ve had visitors show up to my blog searching the strangest string of keywords.  While they were not exactly targeted since they searched for something completely unrelated to blogging, at least they stopped by and hopefully found a useful post or took advantage of the advertising on my blog.

Since starting this blog about one month ago I’ve been watching my Alexa ranking.  Of course my goal is to be in the top 100,000 but isn’t that every bloggers dream.  The good news is that when I started my blog, the Alexa ranking was over 6,000,000.  I’ve watched it over the last 2 weeks decrease tremendously and today it’s sitting at 1,676,000!  Maybe the fairly quick decrease is normal and it will never get much lower.  Is this decrease normal?  If I do get below the 100,000, I will be sure to share the things that I have done to get there.

I would be fascinated to hear from other bloggers regarding their experience with their Alexa ranking.  Post a comment and help other bloggers decrease their ranking.

If you’ve done any reading regarding how Google indexes your site, you’ll notice that a sitemap is important. A sitemap helps Google know how to index your site properly. This can be helpful if one of your goals is to have as many of your blog pages indexed by Google, and I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want your pages to be found.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any skills in html, php or xml…or whatever else it takes to make one. Beyond pasting some code, I’m useless…but learning. That’s when I found a handy plugin for Wordpress that creates the sitemap for me. The Google Sitemap Generator works just like other plugins; You just upload it into the plug in directory, activate it and then tweak the settings and you now have a working sitemap. Now the Googlebot knows how to index your site, which is critcal if you’re going to increase your traffic.

Today is Monday, mid-morning and I’m not at work! On a usual workday I would currently be knee-deep in insurance claims, but not today. “Today is the first day of the rest of my life”. Just kidding…what does that actually mean? Each day is quite different and builds upon all previous experiences so to say today I’m starting over is just silly.

Since Friday was my last day of “paid” work, now I have other things to attend to. With our move coming up in 3 days and plenty to do, I really shouldn’t be writing on my blog. My wife is slaving away at work while I write (I’m feeling a bit guilty). There is a reason that I am writing though…actually two. Content and Consistency.

Content

Each day it’s important to post. How disappointing is it for people to log onto a blog only to see that nothing has been written. Unfortunately this appears to be the case with over half of the blogs in existence. People start out with plenty of steam and then it fades. Many have grand ideas of making big money just writing a few posts and sticking some ads up. I’m finding that it’s much harder to get traffic to my blog than originally thought therefore we come back to CONTENT. It’s vital to any webpage or blog. Without fresh content, the “bots” that hold all the power won’t think that your page is worth visiting often.

Consistency

For me this is very important. I need to set aside time each day to actually post. Sometimes I can easily get caught-up in the technical or advertising side of things, and forget that I actually need to write something meaningful here. You know the old saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”. I’d like to suggest a new one; “a post a day makes the googlebot stay”. I know that’s REALLY lame, but true. Post often and set aside time to do so. Then soon enough you’ll be sitting on the beach on some tropical island. Let’s be realistic about that too. Even the most experienced and wealthy bloggers realize that this thing takes work. It’s not an ATM machine.

Well, I’m off to lunch with a friend. No more half-hour lunch breaks in a lunchroom for me. At least for a few weeks!