Category: Traffic
Targetting Long Tail Keywords
We on DuoBlogger are using different kinds of SEO techniques to increase our rating in the search engines. Today I’m going to talk about Targetting Long Tail Keywords, what it is, and what to do with it.
A good point between long and short tail keywords is that long tail keywords often get alot less search results in Google and that way you would have alot less competetion, and thus more likely to get more visits. I’ll give an example: Search for “Blogging Tips” and see how many results it gives (near 2 million). Compare that to “Blogging Tips for Beginners” which results in merely 600.000 results. Ofcourse this is still a huge amount, but much easier to rank higher if you focus most of your related post on those keywords, this also results into higher conversions.
Plugin
Using the All-In-One SEO plugin for Wordpress, is making it rather easy to manage the keywords, descriptions, titles of each post, making them more Search Engine friendly.
Statistics
I made a graph which explains the correlation (connection) between the monthly searches (Y) for specific keywords and the amount (X) of them. As you can see the amount of keywords as they increase, will also decrease the monthly searches for those keywords. Many SEO Experts will tell you to focus on 3 to 4+ keywords since competing with established websites whom are using 2 keywords will be hard.
What should you do?
So what we did on DuoBlogger lately is looking into Google Analytics and find the keywords which people are using to reach our blog. We searched through some of the recent days and it looked like we had some visits on these keywords:
All the other days looked fairly the same for those keywords. Typing that keyword in Google gave me the result which lead to: Must Have PC Software For Bloggers. So to make this more SEO friendly, we would have to rename the title, description and keywords for the post. As you can see we now named it: Top Blogger Apps. Which should, after reindexing by Google rank up in page 1 in the SERP’s. (If the keywords don’t have much competition you don’t even need that many backlinks to that sub-page, you simply do your on-page optimization like changing the page title then get it indexed then it will start to rank.)
Short Vs. Long Tail Keywords
So you should question yourself if you should focus on short tail or long tail keywords. It all depends on the niche you are in.
You may be wondering why anybody would want to target hundreds of keywords which bring only small traffic. Well the answer is simply that there is less competition so you can rank on the first page of Google for long tail keywords far easier than ranking for short tail keywords. Yes, they don’t bring a lot of traffic separately but if you target lots of long tail keywords you can get lots of easy traffic (note: only a handfull, not that much, but it’s targetted traffic). Not everybody is capable of ranking high for highly competitive keywords but anybody can rank for long tail keywords.
Another benefit of long tail keywords is that the visitors convert amazingly well to sales and ad clicks. The visitors searching for long tail keywords know exactly what they want, be it ‘Small Business Web Design’ or ‘Half Priced Computers’ whatever, they know exactly what they want and hopefully you can provide it to them, and thus generating sales.
See what other Twitterers focus on
I asked around on Twitter to my followers if they were targetting long tail or short tailed keywords. Here is the result:
@Rajupp from TechPP said: I use long tail keywords as well as short ones, just to give you an example, I use “Watch online TV Free” and “Online TV” & …
@Hendricius from DuoBlogger said: I focus on short ones and then try to include long term ones in the post. I try using alternatives to the short title.
@PassTheBoll from PassTheBoll said: I try to use relevant keywords. Usually they are single words, but sometimes phrases.
So what do you focus on, long – short – mulitple? Problems ranking high for some keywords? Share it with us.
8 (free) Killer Tips on Increasing Traffic
I am by no means an expert on the social side of life, but I did learn alot from the power of Social Bookmarking sites like Digg and Twitter for example. When you first start a blog and you aim on monetizing it, you want visitors… and alot of them. You can’t go anywhere without them so you will need to do some stuff to make the visitor stay and come back to your blog.
I’ve come up with 8 simple, yet effective ways on increasing traffic to your blog in almost an instant.
1. Yahoo! Answers
This is one of those easy Search Engine traffic grabbers. Google tends to put the questions that are asked on Yahoo!, even if they are a bit relevant, high on the first page of search results. Although Yahoo! stated that they forbid playing and abusing their system, however I don’t see a point leaving a link at the end of your answer to your own blog if the content is relevant and provides extra information. Sign up at answers.yahoo.com.
I see this technique being used by ProBlogger alot. It’s a great way of increasing post frequency per though. Guest posts tend to have great impact on readers and let them stick to not just your own blog, but also for the person who wrote it. If you post a quality article on a blog that’s popular, the readers are bound to visit your site looking for more and hopefully subscribe to your blog.
3. Make a video tutorial
This has the added benefit of a viral marketing effect, especially if your video tutorial solves a common problem easily. If readers really enjoy it, they are most likely to spread the word and bring in new visitors to your blog.
4. Introduce yourself to others
Often your biggest readers will be your rivals or other bloggers that are your peers. By peers, I mean that they are on the same level of traffic, content, etc. as you are. Email your peers to introduce yourself and mention that you subscribed to their blog and found the content interesting. Leave it at just that, and don’t ask for link exchanges or ask them to subscribe to your blog in return. But do leave a link to your blog at the end. That way they might visit your blog and subscribe, or even better write a short review of your site if they find it really worthwhile.
5. Submit your top articles
By this I don’t mean submitting your article to an article directory, because they never seem to bring in significant traffic. Submit your best articles (that are getting the most page views and comments) to Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and others. Don’t forget to include a ’submit this article’ button on your page to allow your readers to vote on the article. If you’re lucky you might even make it to the front page. One word of warning though – don’t submit every article you write because you run the risk of getting banned for spamming.
In my opinion, small blogs do not have the necessary reader-base to get to the front page. I’ve never had luck with Digg, getting 10-15 diggs at the very most. But I’ve heard small blogs can make it big on StumbleUpon. If you run a video games/technology blog however, I recommend submitting to n4g.com.
6. Make your blog Search Engine friendly
Everyone is obsessed with search engine optimization because it’s the biggest source of free traffic. Just don’t over do it – the key to SEO is moderation. While I’m no SEO guru, a keyword rich title and URL, description and keyword tags does the trick for me. Also consider going for the 3-4 word phrases, since it’s more easy to rank higher with them on Google.
7. Link out to other Bloggers
This is the best way to gain the attention of your peers. I have found that many bloggers visit my article just out of curiosity, to see what I’ve written about them. If they love what they read, they write a short article and link back to me. One example is Videobloggingtips.
Tip 8 is, which requires a whole different approach, forums. Read a detailed post about it here on DuoBlogger.
Banned from Google
Today a person contacted me about a problem he had with Google. He was no longer getting any traffic from the Search Engine. Before he happened to get around 800 users per day and then suddenly only 10-20. The reason is simple: he used blackhat techniques and got banned.
I am dedicating this article to the internet death-sentence, the worst punishment you can get in terms of SEO….. A ban from Google. I am gonna explain the dangers of a ban, what indicates a ban and then let you know what you can do to get unbanned.
So what are the real dangers of getting banned from Google? There are a couple of them, I am getting most traffic on all my websites from Google. 79 percent of my visitors on my gaming site are in fact coming through Google. Only 6 percent Yahoo and 3 percent MSN. If I would get banned that would mean a dramatical loss of traffic for me. Instead of my 20 000 visitors per day I would be able to expect around 500 at most.
Indicators for a ban
With low traffic you are also of course not earning as much with your advertisements. 90 percent less visitors means 90 percent less money. If you some-how get penalized then it basically means that you can screw your website unless you somehow get unbanned. Let’s assume that you are making a living out of Adsense, did not get any education because your websites were running so well and then suddenly experience a dramatical loss of earnings… That would in no way be productive for you.
What are the factors that lead to a ban?
- Blackhat SEO techniques. Placing hidden text on your website is the most common mistake. Everything that is not white-hat (natural) can be labeled as black hat
- Duplicate content. Copying content from another website will get you banned. If you ever copy content then make sure to include a link to the original source. That method is often used on newspaper websites and consequently okay. But make sure that you also provide good content
- So called door-way pages that are just made to get visitors on to another site. Those wesites usually have a link in every article, Google penalizes that as well. I have once been banned on one of my blogs for making a cloak.blog which I only made to get visitors on my main-blog.
- Spammy website. You are usually labeled as spam if you get a massive amount of backlinks within a short period of time. Stay natural and build up your backlinks slowly. Also don’t over do it with the keyword density of your articles.
- Morally incorrect content: Content like extreme violence or anything else morally incorrect can get you banned as well. If you run a forum then this could be a potential danger – you can not control every user yet you will be penalized for them. Also viruses, spyware or any other badware will get you penalized and banned.
- Automated content. There are some programs that claim that they can write you 100 percent original content per mouse click. That is wrong, in most cases the content is simply copied out of an article directory, thus counting as duplicate content. Automating your content-creation is a good and easy way to get booted.
The indicators of a ban from google are relatively simple. Check Google’s index of your website. IF there are no longer any pages listed then that means that you got banned.
Now if you really got banned, what I don’t hope, then you can use a form to applicate for reinclusion into the search engine. To do so click this link. You are required to enter some details, what you think might have caused the ban, what you changed on your website since then etc. Make sure that you provide as detailed information as possible. Google will most likely not read your application on reinclusion twice. You only have one good chance, so make sure to be as honest as possible.
So what can you do to request a reconsideration of your website? Google has the following in their FAQ:
- First, make sure you’ve added your site to your Webmaster Tools account, and verified site ownership.
- Sign in to Google Webmaster Tools.
- On the Dashboard, under Talk to Google in the list on the right, click Request reconsideration and follow the steps.
If you are unsure what you should write then please check out my google reconsideration template.w
For my cloaking blog it took five months to get reincluded. I removed everything google-unfriendly and then reapplied… In fact the long waiting time only shows how little Adsense cares about small websites. I am almost 100 percent sure that they developed algorithms, so that they do not even check the reconsiderations on their own anymore… It will most likely be done by a robot as well. Just make sure you are honest, that’s the best thing you can do.
Wishing your good luck with your application and re inclusion. If you will not get re-included then I can only recommend to make a new website, which is fully compatible with Google’s idea of a perfect website.
Google Analytics guide
Keeping a good record of your site and keeping track of how much traffic and profit your site brings is vital to your site’s success. Google analytics is the perfect way to track and see what is working, and what is not working for your site. This is a guide to use Google’s webmaster tool analytics.
So what the heck is Google analytics anyway, and what does it do for me? How does it help me in the long run? Well, let’s take a look, and take a free tour into the world of Google analytics; I promise you head won’t hurt when we are finished.
Good analytics is a system designed to show you how people are finding your website, and how you can improve your website, to ensure better visits for current and future viewers. This application tracks your visitors through your site, and keeps track of all advertising programs you currently use, this way you know which keywords for your site are actually working, and which ones are not working. This is an excellent way to track everything you need to know, is simple and clear cut. Now that we know what Google analytics is, let’s talk about what this program actually does, and how it works.
The start screen when logging into Analytics
When someone comes to visit your site, Google analytics takes this information and stores it to your server in the form of access logs. Don’t be too scared, Google analytics has made reading these logs very clear cut and simple. These access logs are saved in text that is incredibly simple and easy to look over and analyze. Most analytics software can achieve this for you, but Google analytics takes it one step further by allowing you to see where in your site your visitors are actually going. This is excellent in comparison to competing analytics programs that do not have this specific ability.
Google analytics helps you to understand the reports you view. It provides tips that you can view throughout your reports. These tips are located on the bottom right hand corner of each page; they describe the report data, and what it actually means in terms that you can easily understand. So now that Google analytics has caught your eye, let’s talk about the various features of Google analytics.
Google analytics offers a wide range of features that will help you get the full effect of what is helping your website and what you need to do to improve your website. One of the newest Google analytics features is the ability to capture internal search statistics. This feature tracks and shows what a specific visitor entered into your internal search box, and what page they were actually on when they entered their search information. From there you can see which page link the visitor chose in the search results. Google analytics also allows you to track certain document downloads, and tracks certain links. You can tag PDF files, email address or even outside links and track it when someone clicks on these files or these links. Let’s say now you have viewed all of your analytics reports, and you want to keep and save this to your personal computer to maintain for future records. Google analytics makes this easy by letting you export your reports to an excel page. This will save you tons of time, instead of copying and pasting all of your data. All you need to do is export your data into a CSV file. CSV stands for comma separated values, and what that does is helps you export and save into any desired Excel spreadsheet.
Traffic-generating keywords
Keyword source is a way that Google analytics reports what keywords viewer are using to actually find your website, this way you can see what words are good words, and which ones not so good. Now you know a few among many features that Google analytics has to offer, you are probably wondering how you can find this program and how you can use this program to your full advantage.
So now you feel as though you are ready to improve your site, and add Google analytics to help you save time and achieve success with your site. Where can you find this application, and how do you add it and access it? You can either do a simple Google search for Google analytics or go to the site www.google.com/analytics. From the site, you can take a tour and really get the full idea of what this site is all about, or if you feel you are simply ready to go, go ahead and sign up. The neat aspect to this site is it’s free! Once you have signed up, you still might need a little bit of help figuring everything out, well the first step to success was signing up for Google analytics. Once you do this, you need to then insert Google analytics JavaScript into your pages. In order to track your pages, you must have this code inserted into every page that you want to be tracked. After you have done all of this, Google analytics will do the rest for you beginning with overviews. This allows you to view your site’s performance. Simply log in and go to your website profile and view your site’s reports. This will break it all down for you, but letting you view site traffic over the past months. If you are looking to break it down even more, that option is certainly available, whatever fits your specific needs.
The above picture is an example of a daily report from Google analytics. It allows you to see the success of your site, and the increase or decrease in the amount of visitors. It shows visits, page visits, as well as the average time a visitor spends looking at your site. This site is wonderful because it literally gives you a complete breakdown of your sites activity and success rate.
Semiologic Google Analytics Plugin
The possibilities are endless when it comes to using Google analytics. If you have chosen to use WordPress.com as your chosen blog, Google analytics provides a plug in to use to directly connect your blog to your analytics page. This feature instantly allows you to follow your AdSense clicks (if you are utilizing AdSense), insert additional search engines, and tracks your inquires for your images linked to your blog. Installing the plug in for your WordPress.com blog page is incredibly easy as long as you follow the following instructions and read carefully. The first steps that you need to do when installing is download the Semiologic Google Analytics Plug-in. If this plug in does not work for you there are various plug-in downloads you can use, simply just do a Google search. From there, after the plug-in has downloaded, you need to then extract that plug-in from your .zip file (see image above).
Next, you need to upload the plug-in to your /WP-contents/plugins/ folder.
Activate the plug-in by logging onto your WordPress.com blog and inserting it into your WordPress.com Administration panel.
After that, login to your Google Analytics page and add your WordPress.com blog into the Google Analytic.
From there, a code will be generated for you, simply copy and paste this code snippet and go back to your WordPress.com Dashboard.
Once finished with that verify that the code has been added, by going back to your Google Analytics page.
It may look hard and complicated, but follow the steps and ensure that you have everything saved, copied and pasted. Once you download your plug-in and add it into your blog, Google Analytics will instantly start tracking your traffic!
This is an excellent program and way for you to improve your site, and track and see what people are actually looking at when they come to your site. It can be a little bit tricky at first, but once you get the hang of it, you are sure to get the maximum experience of this program. Remember to use your resources, the internet, specifically Google is the easiest and quickest way to get help and find any information on Analytics you may need.
If you find yourself having some unforeseen trouble with Google Analytics, go directly to the webpage, they have an extensive help page, that can give you step by step help, and ensure that your questions are answered. Get help from fellow Google Analytics users, these users may be able to explain things in a way you would better understand. Check out all of the message boards you can, to get the full idea, and help that you may be looking for. The Google Analytics Help Center will enable you to create a search for your help needs. Simply go to www.google.com/support/googleanalytics either choose from a specific topic you are having trouble with, or type in a question or concern and hit search. It is as simple as this. Take time to learn before you jump on in; get the knowledge that you need.
Google is an incredible search engine and we are lucky to have such a company that has created so many outlets to help us create, track, and profit. So take the time to learn and grow from this, be patient and know that in time everything will either iron itself out, or your will fix it yourself. Use your resources, be experimental and find out what essentially will work for you in the long run. Do not expect any successful results if you just build, and walk away.
Build it up slowly, and maintain and keep at it, you will be rewarded for your hard work, and dedication in the end. Read this article, write some notes, choose your keywords correctly and use your plugins and take advantage of every little free resource that Google Analytics has to offer! Once you sign up with Google Analytics and get set up you will immediately be able to track how visitors are finding your site, and how they are using your site, how to access your information access logs.
Once you receive your access logs you now know how to turn transfer them into Excel spreadsheets to maintain for your own personal records. Be sure to use all of the special features that Google Analytics has to offer, you can find tons more among the web, the few that were mentioned here, were just a simple few. Explore, and create, Google Analytics will do you a great world of good in the long run!
Thanks for reading my guide about Analytics. Let me know if you have any suggestions or questions.
Contact Us
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Mark
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Phone: +1 (310) 734-8977
+31 6 34045081
Skype: MarkDuoBlogger
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Hendrik
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Phone: +1 (818) 322-0251
+49 176 48899584
Skype: Hendricius
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