SEO, Traffic

How many websites do you own? And how many different social bookmarking accounts do you have, or profiles on sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and any other social site you could mention? Chance are if you're reading this post you have at least a couple of websites, and probably at least a handful of social profiles.

Now, is it working for you? Are you happy with your SEO efforts? I'm not either, I've reached the stage where the job is just too big for me to handle on my own, I need help, and if you're like me, probably you do too. If you aren't familiar with what SEO is all about, read the Wikipedia article for a basic explanation

Here's where I have the problem, I'm spending so much time trying to link build and using keyword tools which I don't understand, that I don't have time to write content or optimize my monetization strategies. Now I have to make the decision to employ a consultant to help me improve traffic in a sustainable way. Unfortunately there are just too many search terms that I could rank for that I'm not.

Let me give a really simple example, Search Engine Optimization Chicago seems simple enough, but flip it around Chicago Search Engine Optimization and you probably get a completely different set of results, at least after the top one or two I'd expect different results.

This is precisely where I feel like I'm struggling at present. I can manage to rank for one of the terms that relate to my site, but not for the other, and of course those are just two of many possible examples. Worse still, I'm not an SEO expert, and perhaps I only know enough to be dangerous, or maybe I'm doing better than my peers, how would I know.

At least by employing an SEO I can take all that uncertainty and potential time wasting, and contract it out constructively to a team that I believe give me a report of where I can most easily increase traffic, and which keyphrases I need to work on, so, three guesses if you can figure out who I'll be getting to do my SEO.

I've been playing with Twitter to promote a couple of my websites, with varying success, but I think I see huge potential from tweeting that most website owners could probably take advantage of.

Twitter is a micro-blogging service that restricts the number of characters per message to 140, this allows them to piggy back off mobile phone SMS services as well, and after the initial shock of only writing 140 characters most users soon become quite adept at using the service.

For my own experiments I used Twitter for two sites, one of which is a business site all about Spain, and the other a blog with entertainment stuff on it, not news, just videos, gossip, pictures that sort of thing. I found that each required a different approach on Twitter if I was going to increase traffic to the website.

The entertainment blog only needed me to follow as many people as I could, thousands if possible, and wait for them to follow me back. Then I'd post regular updates with links to the blog for the latest videos etc. This Twitter account worked really well, and referred a lot of traffic to the blog, and increased blog feed subscriber numbers. The potential for doing this is almost unlimited when you consider the number of people who Tweet.

The business website was completely different, it isn't as simple as just following and tweeting, I think a smarter, more thoughtful approach is preferable. To begin with I simply tweeted about the website, linking to my Spain pages, and followed all the other twitterers I could find who tweeted about Spain or learning Spanish.

But that doesn't work, following everyone else in your industry doesn't actually help drive traffic to your site. It might help with exposure amongst peers, but what are you more interested in, reaching your peers, or reaching your customers?

This is probably one of the biggest failings for business tweeting. How do you let a potential customer or at least someone who is interested in your product know that you tweet? I use both of Twitter's search engines, the topic search and also the name search, but to really make the most of Twitter I make sure I reply to conversations that have even the smallest connection to my topic.

Of course if you're a business and decide to tweet, be sure to make sure you tweet or message helpful advice or comments. Nobody likes a spammer and you'll get blocked pretty quickly.

Tweeting for many business owners seems like a waste of time, but I've noticed an increase in traffic to my website, not just from referrals, but also from search engines. I'm not sure why, but it seems like my own website has improved it's SERP since I started tweeting, and I winder if the nofollow on a Twitter profile page is being ignored by Google?

Owning websites that are regional, in other words the subject is a part of the world outside of the USA, makes search engine optimization quite challenging. Mostly because the best and most authoritative sites in our area are often in the native language of the region.

Take promoting English language sites authored in Spain by expats, some of us just want to help other would be expats, others see being an Internet entrepreneur as a great way to earn a decent income and work their own hours. Either way, there aren't all that many great sites that would help with SEO or traffic.

Getting backlinks from a local (Spanish) language website might work for search engine optimization but it often does nothing for traffic, and can actually hurt your site if the bounce rate is high or if people searching for your site using foreign keywords skip your site in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Read More

Most webmasters know that they need to "optimize" their sites in order to get ranked in Google today. And most people know that you need to apply SEO and get links pointed to their sites in order to get ranked. But how do they know what the right technique is needed to get ranked?

Optimization services need to be considered alongside the overall marketing goal of the website. If you're selling a product, videos should be part of that strategy. If you're trying to get leads for a service, testimonials might be the focus of your marketing goals.

There are many methods to gain traffic and conversions on the web. Be sure to use the proper methods that make sense to the consumer and keep it simple!

Getting backlinks to your website, and increasing the number of backlinks is easy if you use Google's Webmaster Tools on your site. Simply login, then click the links tab, then view external links to your pages.

Backlinks to your website help in two particular ways, they help drive traffic to your site from people who read another page and see the link to you as some kind of recommendation, and a good number of backlinks can help your site in the search engines results pages.

Google's Webmaster Tools are a handy service for reliably checking exact pages on other sites that link to your individual pages, and by getting half a dozen links you can quickly see how Google actually views them.

Let me give you an example, one of my sites is quite new, and as you'd expect of a new site, most of the backlinks go to my site homepage. However, a couple of the internal pages have been picked up by other webmasters, and in one case even on Wikipedia. Read More

In SEO terms, managing bounce rate is not often talked about, most 'experts' tend to focus on off page optimization that usually involves minimizing reciprocal links and gaining relevant one way links.

For the last couple of weeks I've been taking a look at my stats on this site over the last four years, and a couple of other sites I own that are younger.

What I've been looking for is a way to improve my SERP (Search Engine Result Page) position, or improve earnings from passive sources such as AdSense.

Internal links improve pageviews
The interesting thing I've discovered is that there are several pages on this blog that have a good number of backlinks and have their own unique title, description etc. Read More