I've read a few article about how the age of your URL is a factor in how Google ranks it. The experience I've had definitely confirms this. It's not a huge factor, but it's not negligible either. So it's yet another reason to keep chipping away at your blog or site whenever you find time to do so. And don't worry if you're not keeping to a regular or frequent schedule. Keep at it long enough and you'll slowly draw more and more traffic, even if you do nothing else.
I've built several blogs over the last few years. Having so many to update, I can go for several weeks, even a month or two, between posts. But what I've noticed with a few of these blogs is that even if I've been slack about updating them, the search engine traffic still increases gradually. I start to rank for keywords and phrases that I never used to before. This seems to apply particularly to those blogs that are more than a couple of years old. (It also applies to a couple of my websites.)
I've read a few article about how the age of your URL is a factor in how Google ranks it. The experience I've had definitely confirms this. It's not a huge factor, but it's not negligible either. So it's yet another reason to keep chipping away at your blog or site whenever you find time to do so. And don't worry if you're not keeping to a regular or frequent schedule. Keep at it long enough and you'll slowly draw more and more traffic, even if you do nothing else.
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It's certainly a great feeling to get onto the first page of Google's search engine results for your chosen keyword or phrase. As long as it has decent search volume, you're sure to get a constant flow of trageted traffic as a result. (And even if you get hardly any, it still proves that you're doing something right!)
But your ultimate goal should always be to rise to the very top of the page -- preferably in the top three positions -- since this is when you really notice the benefits. A study carried out earlier this year showed that when combined these three slots get well over half of all the clicks from people viewing the results. Not surprisingly, there was significant variation between these three places also: Websites ranked number one received an average click-through rate (CTR) of 36.4 percent; number two had a CTR of 12.5 percent; and number three had a CTR of 9.5 percent. Being number one in Google, according to Optify, is the equivalent of all the traffic going to the sites appearing in the second through fifth positions. I have noticed this very effect in action just recently. I was sitting in third place for a nice two word phrase that was bringing several hits a day to the main domain of this site. Recently, I moved into second place for it. It's quite remarkable what a boost that change has given me. If I do get into the top spot, well, that will be fantastic! Not so long ago I started a new website (with blog) about Perth. I have been very busy with other projects so it's still very basic at the moment. There's very little content and only a few backlinks to it. I've basically just taken a few photos to show how Perth is booming, and put them on the site.
Although I've almost never put photos on sites before I was aware that it was important to name them accurately, since this could bring in some traffic. Surprisingly, it's started to work already. I haven't had tons of hits, but there's a regular trickle of visitors to the blog coming via Google image searches. So, it looks like there's a good source of easily gained traffic there for webmasters to tap in to. The trick seems to be in naming your images correctly. My photos are all specific and unique to Perth. So it's not unreasonable to assume that the traffic is mostly geo-targeted as well. I haven't looked into this but logic dictates that if people know the buildings and streets I've named, then they're probably also from Perth, or some other city in Australia. After all, people from overseas wouldn't have such specific knowledge of this city. I suspect that if a local landmark is very well known, then there'll be a higher proportion of people from overseas searching for it. The inverse would be true too. So, the less well known the landmark or location you're photographing, the more localized the search engine traffic that image can bring. (Of course there'd be smaller volume, too. But if you have several photos up the effect will certainly accumulate over time.) This is worth knowing for anyone who wants to get geo-targeted traffic. Digital cameras are not pricey, and It doesn't take long to go out and take some photos and upload them onto your site or blog. There is a risk with using lots of photos, however, particularly ones of famous landmarks. That is that they'll get ripped off and used on other sites. So here's an article about how to address this problem. Still on the subject of Google ranking factors: Here's another good summary of the things the search engine giant deems most important:
One of these is not often cited, but still something you should focus on - particularly if you have a blog. And that is that Google takes into account the quality and relevance of the sites that you link to. In short, if you are citing quality articles and blog posts that are relevant to the point that you are making then it will reflect well back on your own blog. That's why I would suggest searching the news aggregators often - Google News being the biggest and best. This will this bring you the most authoritative sites - with the big companies like CNN and News Ltd having high page rank, usually 6 or above. These sites are also really stable and enduring, which is important. Even if the article or blog post in question gets removed and you end linking to a blank page, the main URL will still be there. Smaller sites and blogs, however, are often being run by individuals in their spare time and sometimes end up going belly up. The domains get picked up and used by other webmasters - some of them building gambling and sex sites. It's possible that if you do a lot of linking out to such blogs, you could eventually end up linking to a "bad neighborhood" without knowing it, and subsequently be penalized. I've just found a good Google ranking factor checklist. The page does seem to be fairly old - at least a couple of years. However, it still serves as a good summary of the best and worst things you can do for your site's SEO.
It's clearly an authoritative resource. I did a backlink check on Yahoo for it and it's got over 1400 sites linking to it And a lot of them are very well known themselves. So, it's definitely worth a look. Of course, a lot of the information on that page would be gobbledygook to the newbie webmaster. However, a lot of isn't, too! If you just applied a few of the concepts it contains you'd be making some really positive steps SEO-wise. Just a thought on putting location keywords into your pages: Of course these are vital if you are a bricks and mortar business. It's the most obvious way of drawing in localized, high converting traffic.
And people do a lot of searching for information about various locations - all the way from the country level down to suburbs and even streets! Of course, a high proportion of these searches relate to accommodation and real estate. But there are other general themes as well. Even when you get down to the suburb level, it's quite surprising just how many searches there are. Type your suburb into Google's keyword tool and you'll see what I mean. That's why it's always a good idea to include such words if you want that localized traffic. You're bound to corner some long-tail keyword searches eventually. And it can be useful to list neighbouring suburbs as well. Say you're a plumber in Yokine. Obviously you should target that word specifically, repeating it a few times and perhaps even bolding it. But you could also include a line like: "We also service surrounding areas including Tuart Hill, Joondanna, Coolbinia and Nollamara." In order to speed up the indexing of information, search engines skip over certain words. These are called "stop words". It's a good idea to avoid using them if possible, particularly in titles.
There is quite a surprisingly large number of them. Here's a good list. Here's a good article about localized SEO, which is of course extremely important for people with bricks and mortar businesses. As the writer points out, it's important to optimize for your location (city, and even suburb) both on your pages and on pages linking back to your site.
Welcome to my blog, which I'll use to link to good sites, articles and blog posts of interest to newbies learning to optimize their sites for search engines. (I'll also add some thoughts of my own, of course!)
So, here's the first link: It's about how to tell the search engines what country - or even city - your website is most suitable for, so that it can be shown in results pages to people in that same area. It's a good post, and particularly relevant to Aussies. |
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