Anyone who has a website of any kind strives to attract visitors. Lots of visitors. It makes us feel valuable, even popular (as silly as that may sound). The best way to attract new visitors is by the strategic use of keywords that search engines such as Google pick up in compiling their rankings.
I’m relatively new to the Internet world, since this site just went live early in 2009. It takes awhile for Google to even realize you exist as a website, and the process of earning page rank isn’t necessarily immediate. Google looks for consistent, relevant content rather than a site that never changes. The vast majority of websites get virtually no traffic.
Thankfully, I’ve acquired enough training that this site’s visitor count has been increasing on a regular basis. Some of this success is by design and some is completely by accident. Let me give you an example.
One of the pages on this site highlights my feature writing. It’s under Writing Services>Feature articles>Feature article example. I’ve come to realize by analyzing my data that visitors don’t necessarily arrive at the site through the home page. In fact, they hardly ever come through the home page.
However, because feature articles are a highly searched-for topic on Google, the vast majority of my visitors come right to that page. The numbers are really amazing.
A Google search for “feature article example” brings up 16.8 million possible results. My page is in the No. 2 position on the first page of that search. Unbelievable! And the fact this success was just this side of a complete accident makes it almost humorous.
Other closely related searches are almost as successful. “Example of feature article” brings up 31.9 million possible results. My page is in the No. 4 position on the first page. Simply changing the search parameters to a plural of the keywords – “Examples of feature articles” – brings up 14.6 million results. This site comes up as No. 7 on the first page.
No wonder I’ve been getting a ton more hits of late than at this point a year ago. And you can bet I’ll change up the feature article on that page regularly to satisfy Google’s requirement for consistent, relevant content. Come back to check out these interesting stories, and thanks for visiting.
Posted by Mike Dauplaise on March 14, 2010 at 2:16 PM under