21 Search Traffic Tips

This post is part of our 68 Traffic Tips day. To find the complete list when we’re done, see the original post. Be sure to subscribe to get a weekly round-up of our daily traffic tips.

1. Choose one cookie based and one IP based statistics program, as the numbers are a bit different depending on which one you use.
2. Look at a snapshot of your traffic using your statistics program weekly or monthly.
3. Before you do keyword research, make sure you’re using the right keywords.
4. Try asking your audience what they’d type into a search engine to find you.
5. Instead of pursuing just the competitive, short tail terms (short phrases like “internet marketing“), or only less competitive,  long tail phrases (longer phrases such as “how do I get started in internet marketing?”), use some of the longer phrases to reach the shorter phrases – rank for both.
6. Choose one family of keywords and optimize for it. Unless you’re a seasoned expert, you’re not going to rank for dentist, dental practice, cosmetic dentistry, california dental work and los angeles crown settings. Pick an area, dominate it, then if you can, leverage your way into some of the other less competitive areas.
7. Getting good search rankings is mainly about the quest to present to the search engines a balance of content and links.
8. The harder, or more competitive, the keyword, the more complex it is to correctly balance the equation of content + links= a good ranking.  The harder the keywords, the more multiple subtle factors come into play, but they are all related to these two items.
9. There’s more than one way to skin a cat (and I still want to know when and why, in history we inherited this expression.  Why would I want to skin a cat?) Nearly every theory of search can be debunked or supported by theory. What you want to find is the method that got results for companies like yours.
10. Now that Google is trending towards personalization based on social circles, the quality of your social circle matters more than ever, as does the content you submit. Keep keywords and content in mind.
11. Get into Google News with a press release.
12. Get into Google News with an article.
13. Get into Google News as a news provider.
14. Pay more attention to Video. Film and television are the two mediums the masses are used to, and by far appear to be the most successful vehicles to promote your content.  It’s far easier to rank with video than with text as many companies fail to realize how important video is.
15. Go into any videos you have on YouTube and request the new auto-captioning available for all videos on YouTube with clear audio tracks. You can later take the auto-captioned file, improve it and re-upload with your corrections.
16. Google is also placing more of an emphasis on localization in its shift to more personalized results. Be sure to log into the Google Local Business Center, as well as Yahoo’s, and get your local business office set up, whether or not you have a site.
17. Google Blog Search is increasing in prominence as Google continues to change the look of the results page. If you don’t have a blog, start one. If you do have one, make sure it’s positioned correctly in Google Blog Search, not just for a general search, but for the times you publish a new post.
18. Updates are another featured area of the upcoming new Google results page (you can already see this new Google look as the default on new computers, reportedly). To get in on this action, you want to make sure your tweets, and other real-time updates are on-message. That doesn’t mean talk about yourself all the time, it means, be consistent.
19. If you have things to sell, Google products is for you. It’s much easier to submit than it was back when it was Google Base.
20. Don’t forget about Yahoo, Bing, Ask, or the major directories, general or niche. Just because they aren’t Google doesn’t mean they aren’t important. Those of us who thought Yahoo was the only place that mattered were blindsided when Google came along, as were those who refused to add social media to their marketing mix, now that Facebook is driving as much traffic, or more than, Google. Today’s newbie could be tomorrow’s giant.
21. Pay attention to the major players, and niche rulers in search and directories, but be selective about anyone outside the top ten. The idea that submitting your site to 6000 directories will get you anything other than links at the 10% of them that count at all, is a myth. And you can get 600 equivalent links from article marketing, forum marketing, or buying them, so what’s the difference?