Measuring Incremental SEO Changes

One of the things that many people get frustrated with is measuring the progress of their search engine optimization changes. As we know it can take days, weeks, or even months to see results of the changes made to the site being worked on.

And to make matters even worse, it will also depend on how "important" the search engines see the site as well since a site that is visited by the search bots more frequently will be more likely have the results of the changes show up faster.

Recently I decided to test some incremental changes one by one, the site I was testing on is a site that has been established for some time, has a Pagerank of 4, but does not necessarily get updated daily or even weekly.

Since I am a big believer that the title tag is the most important single item you can do for on-site SEO (feel free to argue that one....) I wanted to modify one pages title tag from something that was less competitive to something that was more competitive but when the site was first launched the site would not of had the link juice to rank for.

The term is still directly related to the site content but is the higher searched version of the product term it focuses on.

One thing I like to look at before measuring anything like this is the number of Google search results for the term based on how a typical user would search for the term and not a techie  (without quotes in other words).

In the case of this term there are around 5 million or so results that show up with a solid range of companies on the first 3 pages. Overtime my goal is page one but for now I want to see what one little tweak can do, can that one tweak take the site from not showing up to showing up for the search (at least in the first few pages) and how fast will that happen, or even will it happen.

After I measure the initial tweaks results then I will do one more change, all "white hat".

Results? Well after just two days the site now shows up on page 3 of the Google SERP's for the term and that is before any further optimization is done and without waiting for any real aging on the term.

It would be completely expected, from past experience, that over time that ranking would do even better without any further optimization, since I have the benefit of time for what I am testing I am scheduling to check the results after one month then two months before making any further changes.

After that I will start to make further optimizations to the site, at times we tend to ignore the fact that we need to measure SEO results over time. We expect fast results and with competitive terms it may take time before you see those results.

Sometimes we get spoiled with long tail search terms ranking fast, but when working with more competitive terms it is best to measure over time and not get frustrated.

A Little Keyword Research Can Go A Long Way

Today we have a guest post by Morgan Linton of Domainvestors.tv and Linton Investments, here is a bit more about Morgan:

Morgan is the publisher of Domainvestors.tv a blog about Domain Name Investing with a focus on Video. Morgan is also the Founder of Linton Investments, a Domain Name Investment company in Los Angeles, California. Morgan has also written a popular book about Domain Flipping available from DNFlipping.com.

Many people know that using keywords and anchor-text can go a long way towards improving your search engine ranking. What most people fail to realize though is that it is not just picking any keywords, it is picking the right keywords that will bring solid targeted traffic to your website or blog.

So how can you identify which keywords your target customer is looking for? It's not as hard it you might think but it does take knowing how to use the right tools. The first tool you want to look at is the Google Adwords Keyword tool. If you don't know what this is - get ready to meet your new best friend. The Google Adwords Keyword tool is like a Google cheat sheet. It gives you data on how many people are searching for a particular keyword (or keywords) on Google every month. On top of this it also shows you which related keywords are most frequently searched so that you can make a top ten list of the most searched keywords relating to the keywords in your domain name. 

Here's an example. Suppose you own the domain name Kayaking.org - you would use the Google Adwords keyword tool to determine what keywords related to Kayaking have the highest search volume on Google. In the case of Kayaking - the top five related keywords are (in order of search volume) - canoeing kayaking, canoe kayak, kayak fishing, sea kayak, and ocean kayak. Do you think this would have been the five related keywords you would have guessed? This is a step that many Domainers forget - they assume that they know what the most popular keywords are when they haven't taken the time to do the research. In the case of Kayaking there could be thousands of related keywords, but only five that get a bulk of the searches - these are the keywords you want to use in your text and anchor text within your site. 

Suppose I decided to guess the most popular keywords and picked "kayaking trip" as one of my anchor text phrases. I use this keyword phrase instead of "canoeing kayaking" because who the heck would think of that? Well "kayaking trip" gets around 4,000 searches on Google a month, "canoeing kayaking" on the other hand gets around 450,000 a month - pretty big difference don't you think! This research only takes a few minutes of time but can go a long way towards allowing your domain to rank well for keywords that people are actually searching for. 

Another great keyword research tool you can use is Wordtracker. While this is not a free tool, it is an excellent way to research keywords and determine which keywords are the best fit for your site. Wordtracker goes a step further than the Google Adwords Keyword Tool by providing even more detailed keyword data and an entire academy for learning more about how to use this data to improve your search engine ranking. Wordtracker even has a cool plugin for Firefox called "SEO Blogger" that will allow you to do your keyword research in a separate panel while you are writing a blog post. 

Whether you use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool or Wordtracker you will find-out very quickly how a little keyword research can go a long way. Remember, organic traffic is the best traffic you can get, not only is it free, but it is targeted traffic, so take your time, understand your keywords, and dominate the search engines!

Today is a guest post by Morgan Linton, here is a little background about Morgan, most of you are probably already familiar with Morgan but just in case....

Minisite To Google First Page In Less Than Month

Its been about a month since launched the Mathbooks.net minisite. I thought it would be good to review the results of the launch of this keyword rich minisite.

First off this site was done a little different than others I have done in the past. I had originally planned to build the site myself but due to time constraints I chose to outsource to AEIOU.com. So, this site is a combination of keyword researched content written by a selected writer I use for many of my sites and SEO and site development done by AEIOU.com. I also did a bit of my own link building but the majority was done by AEIOU.com.

Rather than take you through all 15 keyword selections I chose to target we will show the results for the top two: Math Books and Mathbooks. These are the most generic terms that could be chosen other than the singular version of the words which normally means that they will also be the most competitive. Math Books was shown to have a search volume of 90,500 in the month of March per the Google Keyword Research Tool.

Before the minisite I was getting anywhere from 1 to 3 visits per day parked. This created revenue but I knew I could do better with a site if I could rank well for the terms selected.

Well, the results are in, currently if you search for the term Math books the site ranks between 4 and 6 (seems to move around a bit but always consistent) and Mathbooks is ranking in the 4th spot. That is in less than a month, first page for a generic keyword in less than a month is a very solid result and shows that the work and investment can pay off.

Traffic is more than 10 times the visits per day than parked and revenue has obviously increased along with that. I very soon will be implementing Ebay Affiliate Ads on the page as well which should allow for even further increased revenues.

Free Minisite Ebook – Wordpress News Aggregator in 15 Minutes

Wordpress Minisite News Aggregator in 15 Minutes

UPDATE: A new version also now exists at How To Build A Wordpress News Aggregator although not in downloadable format, if you want a PDF this is the post for you.

Minisites for your Domains come in many different forms. One that has become popular is taking a niche and building a news aggregator using Wordpress and the FeedWordpress Plugin which is built specifically to aggregate RSS feeds from sources that you choose. This How-To Create A Wordpress Minisite Tutorial will show you how to create a Wordpress Minisite aggregating news for a specific topic, in this case using Cpanel and Fantastico.

If you do not have hosting with Cpanel and Fantastico then you should head to Hostgator.com, since they have packages that allow for unlimited Wordpress installations at very low prices, I use them for all of my hosting for both my dedicated servers and blog hosting for BruceMarler.com
Originally I was going to paste all pictures and info in one blog post but after seeing the length of the post I feel its best to offer it is a PDF document in a sort of informal E-Book format (for free of course).

To download the Wordpress News Aggregator in 15 Minutes Process click this link (its free) Wordpress Minisite News Aggregator in 15 Minutes

Yahoo Search Results Matter For My Minisites

I very seldom focus on checking my Yahoo search results for my various minisites and developed domains and spend the majority of my time verifying Google search results. I have found that recently Yahoo has been showing certain minsites of mine in the first page of their listings causing a measurable increase in traffic and revenue.

One example of this is my site PensacolaBeach.me . Pensacola Beach is a popular tourist destination in the Florida panhandle. I knew the SEO for anything related to it would be tough up front but have had some success with certain targeted terms but did not expect to rise to the front page of Google (or Yahoo for that matter) for quite some time for the term Pensacola Beach.

I had noticed that mid last week the traffic had went up and that revenue from Google Adsense was also increasing. I took a look through my Statpress statistics and also my Awstats details and figured out that the term Pensacola Beach had increased in the common keywords driving traffic. Looking at referrers Yahoo was now referring a solid amount of traffic. I then went to Yahoo (really cannot remember the last time I used Yahoo for a search) and found that indeed I was in the first page of listings for the term Pensacola Beach.

This is good news for a few reasons, the obvious is that the SEO work that has been done for long tail terms has also paid off for the primary term I expected to wait longer for results on (I just started the development in January).  Also, for you .ME fans, with the results I have had so far I cannot complain about developing this on the .ME extension (more details coming on .ME and SEO in the interview I am posting Monday).

I know that it comes to no surprise to anyone that Yahoo matters, but as much time as I spend focusing on Google search results and placement I really found the amount of revenue and traffic increase I received interesting and actually worth spending sometime researching in future developments. For those that fall into the same camp as I have in checking Google only, you may find it worth the time to spend a portion of your effort verifying placement in Yahoo results as well.

On a side note, I am now only 2 sites away from having all my minisites moved over to my HostGator account. After much pain at my previous hosting provider (outages, changed configurations, DNS issues) all while paying for a VPS I have successfully moved to a HostGator reseller account and have had better performance and the support has been great.

Yes, anything ad you see on this site for HostGator is an affiliate but when it comes to hosting its gotta be right. If you are looking for a good provider or just starting from scratch you really cannot go wrong with them.

Random Domaining Notes

This is not the post I planned on doing today but due to a technical difficulty I don't have the bandwidth to fix right now I thought I would post a few domaining notes that were not quite large enough to justify their own post. Here goes...

What may of been one of the coolest things in my keyword research happened today, while researching various keywords coming to my blog I noticed that I had a couple searches for "St. Louis Domainers" show up minutes before in my Statpress results. Thought that was interesting since I am in the St. Louis area. Well, literally minutes later I had a call on my cellphone from a domainer in the St. Louis area interested in meeting and discussing domains sometimes, he was the one searching.  Just a cool, fun experience to see the search result in a phone call. Starting to think its a Missouri Domainer Mafia, the person today, Patrick Carleton (Associated Cities), Aron Meystedt, Tia Wood, and me. I know theres more of you out there!!!

Next note, if you are not twittering get to it. Although I have a hard time sometimes fitting what I want to say into 140 characters I find myself getting more from my Twitter communications and social network than I do from most other online networks at this point but I will admit to neglecting my Facebook account due to Twitter. I have been able to acquire domains I would not of found otherwise, create domaining relationships that would not of occurred otherwise.

I want to give a shoutout to Esa and Sri at Estibot.com. After my minisites compared post a few weeks back they have contacted me and found that when the files were transferred there was some corruption that caused some content to be truncated, etc. Great follow up by them. Esa was top notch in communications concerning this and had the team on it right away. Thanks!!!

Was just reading a post on Techcrunch concerning the changes that are coming in Digg Search. For anyone that has used Digg for link building and search traffic this could cause some changes in the traffic flow. Keep an eye on it.

I want to also thank all of you for reading, the blog has been up for a few weeks now and the results have been better than I could of expected from a networking and acceptance standpoint. Good people in this domainer group. I plan to be back to the minisite and how-tos posts in the next day or so and continue to give ideas on how to either choose names for outsource development or develop on your own rapidly.

OK, now for the biggest thing in this post, I PROMISED my daugther that I would mention that tomorrow is her 8th Birthday!!! She is standing over my shoulder right now and making sure this sentence is typed exactly to her liking. Happy Birthday Little Diva!!!!!

Minisite Development Domain Selection Tips

I have had several (dozens...) of emails in the past week asking various questions about developing minisites, using wordpress for minisites, revenue on my minisites, and how-to create minisites.

As most people will tell you, I do respond to each and every email rather quickly most of the time, if I miss one its because Outlook may of been a little aggressive filtering it to junk mail.

That said, I thought I would do a few posts this week about various minisite development topics and how I choose between doing the Minisite development myself or if I outsource and also what names I choose and why.

First things first, when do I choose to build compared to outsourcing to someone else?  This comes down to a couple factors, the largest one being time to be quite honest. I have a very demanding sales job that I do along with my Domaining. People ask why do both? Well I actually like the field I am in and the job I do so I use outsourcing based on using my time more effectively (if you really want to get an idea of how to work effectively read 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris).  I would expect the majority of domainers work a full-time position while domaining part time, outsourcing is the key if you plan to develop any of your domains if that is the case.

The second big one is the type of site I want built, I have zero graphic skills or  graphic creativity, I admit that freely, if I want a simple minisite with simple text content that can be SEO'ed I have that process down to minutes for the site creation. I create those on my own, if it is a site I think could use more of a designers touch and a nice logo then I outsource.

That said, one thing I have learned from experience is make sure the minsite focuses on keywords that have a decent PPC.

I will give a really good example of this, I like to use certain domains for testing various SEO work and Google Adsense optimization.  A few months back I purchased KingCobras.org. I recognized ahead of time that the site would not have high PPC values but it was a name that receives quite a few searches per month (approximately 22,000 for exact match) and would be perfect for what I was testing (SEO on images).  The site is not pretty by any means but I was able within a month to go from a couple visitors a day to 200 to 300 a day (pageviews are higher obviously), it has leveled now in the 100 range due to lack of attention but can easily be rasied back up to that level.  I was able to get a reasonable CTR but the earning per click was a measley 3 to 6 cents. Once again, expected, but it just goes to show to anyone just picking terms to grab traffic if you are looking for dollars and not cents per day pick your content and terms. Thats the point right, to make money:)

Now as far as that site goes, it gets good traffic, I now have a base to build revenue from, there are revenue models that I know will actually make some money off that site and they will be implemented in the near future and I will report on this.

Now, lets go the opposite direction, a site that gets much smaller search volume but pay per click is much higher. WomensBikeShorts.com. Exact match searches are around 2,900 a month which is much lower than the KingCobras.org site so traffic is lower, BUT revenue is much better on a per day average. Why is that? Well its because it is a product people are looking to buy, when people search for a term like Womens Bike Shorts they are looking to buy a product, when they search for King Cobras they are researching. Big difference between what people will pay per click between those 2 intentions.

So, to circle back around to selecting outsourcing or for that matter minisite topics. Its about revenue, if you are looking for high pay per click terms look for services or products, develop your site to match the terms that bring the biggest payback. I would rather a site that gets 20 unique visitors a day getting 20 to 30 percent CTR with 30 cent clicks than a site getting 200 visitors  a day with 10 percent CTR getting 3 cent clicks. 

All those factors need to go into your decision process when choosing a name for development, deciding if the outsource cost is worth it, or if you want to do it yourself.

I will be posting later this week with an exact how to of how to launch simple Wordpress Minisites that have been proven to have solid CTR for those times when you cannot justify or just do not want to outsource your domain development.

Available Names – Mathematics Keywords

As of this post the list of Mathematics Domains were available for registration, all .COMs with solid Google keyword search results. It would be great if you left a comment after registering.

GradeMathematics.com
MathematicsCalculus.com
GeometryMathematics.com
MathematicsStudent.com
MathematicsProblem.com
MathematicsConcepts.com
MathematicsStudents.com
MathematicsNumber.com
MathematicsEquations.com
MathematicsProbability.com
MathematicsMusic.com
MathematicsSkills.com
MathematicsTopics.com
MathematicsTrigonometry.com
MathematicsDivision.com
MathematicsFractions.com
MathematicsActivity.com
ConsumerMathematics.com
MathematicsWordProblems.com
MathematicsMultiplication.com

Geo Domains Locked and Loaded – Watch Your Keywords

One thing I have always found interesting is watching what people are searching for that landed them on my site. My minisites are very keyword targeted and usually are pretty predictable but many times I have found that my sites have been "selected" by google to rank high for certain terms I did not necassarily expect and by using this data I can sometimes find solid hand registered domains that I may not of found otherwise.

With the recent launch of this blog I have found a very interesting search that has started to send traffic my way. Recently I posted about Newspapers Closing. I have been a fan of Geo domains for sometime but with the recent fall of old school media I really think the time is now for Geo domain owners to fully develop and take advantage of the opportunity at hand. One thing that really drove this point home has been a term that has been driving many visitors a day to this blog.

That term is Newspapers Closing, at first I did not think much of it but then started thinking, the  public has changed mindset enough that they are searching online frequently enough that it would show up in my keyword results. A quick check of the google keyword tool shows small results for this term but in the past 3 days I have had more visitors for this term than the big G shows for average search volume on this term for a month.

As more and more newspapers close their doors people will be looking for alternatives online. If you own a Geo domain it would be a smart move to be that portal. I will be posting in the near future on content that is freely available to develop your Geo domain to provide the content that people are looking for each morning when they sip their coffee.

So, even though this post is focused on why I think a specific term is valuable for Geo domains, the point is to pay attention for trends in the data that you have in your keyword stats. It could be valuable....