Selecting your top keywords is one of the many ways to increase site traffic. Knowing how to select keywords that work for your site is easier with the use of Google AdWords:Keyword Tool. I found the tool to be useful in seeing how well my keywords ranked as well as provided me with a list of additional keywords that might be of use for my site. The amount of data that I got back took some sifting through just to narrow it down to a few hundred. Now I need to eliminate the duplicates and long shots and see what will be the perfect fit. Not only do I have to widdle my new, improved, data driven list to 3-5 keywords and I then have to place them strategically within the page.
If you've ever looked at or designed a website you know the header is
muy importante. The trick is to list your keywords in your header without it sounding forced or contrite. As a business, the header is typically the title of your company with pertinent contact information. Having already created www.angoontrading.com with a name that is more likely to be associated with a rather than the numerous products and services we offer there is very little chance that our title is going to contain too many of top ranked keywords for the site. Not to mention it would be odd to switch the entire format so I need to develop a creative way to include the keywords in the header or possibly flip flop the order of some information.
Google offers a very helpful toolbar that allows you to view a other sites' page rank. This information is helpful when selecting your keywords. The goal is to get the top of the page and the only way to do this is to increase the page rank. Links with reputable sites are always the best and will increase the ranking more quickly. Our page ranks a whopping 0/10 and I am not too sure why since we have links with several other websites. I am going to have to see what their page rank is next. I am also going to contact some of the sites that outrank us to see if we can link since they are mainly informational sites thus not a true competitor.
The information in Brad Callen's SEO Made Easy eBook has so far provided me with information that I can easily transfer to my site. And the good news is I have already been using 3 of my keywords and some alt img tags but not necessarily in the most optimum locations on the page. As a novice I find that no matter how much I seem to read, I always learn something and this evening was no different. I learned how to read the source code for a website by clicking on the
View button on the top of the web browser and selecting source code. Yeah I know it might seems like a "duh" moment, but I never even thought to look. Now I know.
Reviewing the source code for websites that ranked higher than mine was a bit eye crossing. While I was able to find some areas in which they used alt img tags and I didn't, it was challenging to see the minor discrepancies in the html text for my untrained eye.
As of Jan. 1, 2010 site statistics:
Visitors: 605
Unique Visitors: 526
Page Views: 1344
Bounce Rate: 57.02%
Jan. 2, 2009 site statistics:
Visitors: 394
Unique Visitors: 205
Page Views: 866
Bounce Rate: 65.48%
The number of visitors increased 53%, unique visitors more than doubled, page views increased 55% and the bounce rate reduced nearly 16%. The goal for the month of Feb. is to get all the keywords, headers, titles, alt img tags correctly positioned on the page and contact additional sites to point to ours. By the end of March I would hope to have increased our site traffic 5% and increase our page rank from 0 to 3.
