I really can proudly say now, that I have improved my Google rankings, because of appropriate and extremely related tags (note: not meta tags, but post tags). Yeap.. those tags, that most of us hide or set to “noindex” (at least I have been doing like that before).

Google now even indexes my pages much more faster. Probably, because of improved tags as well – no other logical explanation.

I will show how I find appropriate and related tags in a second, but now – let me explain why…

…my Google ranking is improved because of tags?

First, picking every time from 5 to 10 new tags gives you thereafter 6-11 new pages (1 is your latest post plus 5-10 tag pages). You have heard, probably, that Google loves sites with a lot of pages, right?

Second, you might be thinking, that those tag pages have duplicate content and they are not supposed to add any value. It can be true, if you don’t have meta tag “canonical”, which says:

“Bots and crawlers from search engines, wait! Do not think that I create duplicate pages!! I just want to make my navigation easier, so that visitors could find needed stuff faster!“

Guess what – bots and crawlers treat this “canonical” meta tag just like that.

How to pick appropriate tags to make Google ranking better?

When you search for the proper title for your new post, you, probably, find several variants and then you pick the best one. But wait.. what about other variants? Too competitive or not that competitive? Don’t think about that – just let them be your tags. You can see that I have done just like that in this post (and in several latest too).

And, believe it or not, sometimes tag pages rank better, than my main post! Why? Because they all have different search competitors.

Therefore, you should also consider to make your tags capitalized, because they should look like common pages, when people see them in search results. Simply treat them like your common posts considering SEO factors.

Tools to improve Google ranking

I use only related searchs, that Google suggests. How you can do that too?

Step 1: Type in your main keyword phrase and click “search options”

Step 2: Switch from “Standard View” to “Related Searches”

Step 3: Pick suggestions for your tags, that relate to your topic

Find the line: Related searches for “improve google ranking”. You can see, that there are lots of variants. They are not random. Google knows what to show you, so why don’t you use it?

That’s it. This will definitely improve your Google ranking. Just try it :)

***

It’s All About Results™ – Google AdWords

Video Dessert: How To Improve Your Google Ranking?

Ever searched your name on Google? Did you come up on page 1 or 17? What about your web site or blog? Are you showing up for the ideal keywords? Watch this Daily Idea and learn how to improve your Google ranking in a few easy steps.

Though it sounds impossible for a blog like mine… with Pagerank 1 – I did it! I got to the first page of Google competing with 106 millions other pages.

When I first time saw it… I didn’t pay any attention, because this number of competing results didn’t mean anything for me. And the post itself, say, is not that worthy to burst with joy… but the fact, that my blog is shining on the first page of Google, made me crazy just about a week ago. I have finally realized the reasons and the things I have accidentally done, which made this post jump THAT high.

Why and How I Got to the First Page?

The post, that is currently on the 1st page of Google, is about the value of play factor in blogging.

Check the result of Google’s first page for that certain phrase:

Results 1 – 10 of about 106,000,000 for play factor. (0.26 seconds)

Why did Googlebot like this post to let it reach Google’s first page?

Let’s see what I have done there:

1. The word “play” was used 33 times (on the whole page, not just in post);
2. The word “factor” was used only 5 times;
3. The whole keyword phrase “play factor” only once;
4. The word “play” was used 7 times between < strong >< / strong > tags;
5. “Play” was also used as a part of the title of 5 pictures out of 5;
6. I didn’t make any external links using “play factor” keyword phrase or part of it;
7. I was using the video of Stuart Brown, where he speaks about play in general. The video is 30 minutes long and without a real interest to the topic, you would have, probably, turned it off at once;
8. As you can see, the number of retweets is not huge at all.. It means, that there was not much attention;
9. Meta keywords that were used there: “play”, “blogging”, “value”, “stuart brown”;
10. I should also admit that I have been asking too many questions instead of making statements or answers, which usually brings more value;
11. The post itself appeared to be boring for most of you.. at least I thought so, because there were made no comments;
12. Because of the previous reason, I have decided not to submit it to social bookmarking sites etc;
13. I didn’t show it commenting on blogs with CommentLuv as “my recent blog post”;
14. And according to Google tools for webmasters my strongest keywords are “blog”, “google”, “post”, “traffic” – not “play” or “factor” or “blogging” at all;

Find the Answer and Win!

So, which of the above reasons helped my blog to get to the first page of Google? I know it would be too easy to reveal the truth, but I promise to confirm it, if you say it in the comments!

Follow the 14 facts I have named above and read 2 more clues below!

***

Here is the clue #1: Watch the video to help you. It mentions the true fact, which I didn’t know before.. though it was so natural and logical.

Video: Dominating First Page of Google

Clue #2: My stats from Google webmaster tools showing traffic that Google sent via “play factor” keyword phrase.

***

It turns out, that in order to get to the first page of Google.. you need only this…

What am I talking about? The first one, who answers correctly, gets free banner spot until the end of February.

Waiting for your answers!

Update: The answer is given in the comments.

Recently, I’ve been trying to get to the top of Google with the certain phrase – “getting website traffic“. I, actually, haven’t managed. Let’s analyze this problem.

What things I did one-by-one

1. I’ve analyzed the first 10 results of the search query – getting website traffic. I even made a table with the stats of those competitors.. but I’ve deleted it, so I’m showing you the approximate variant, in order to make you see the main principle of my work. As you can see from the above screenshot, the competitors are pretty tough, but most of them have much smaller articles;
2. I’ve decided to make the big article, because my pagerank is only 1, which means, as I thought, I should compensate it with a huge post;
3. I’ve used the word “getting” 14 times, the word “website” 52 times and the word “traffic” – 46 times. The whole keyword phrase – 6 times, including the “H1″ title. I knew, that my competitors from the top results are using keyword phrases a lot – from 8 to 40-50 times (for each word separately);
4. I’ve tried to speak about the most important factors related to my topic;
5. The keyword phrase was used in the title, in the “H1″ tag title and as the first keyword for the post page;
6. I’ve submitted that post to about 6-7 do follow social bookmarking sites with PR 5+;
7. I’ve left about 5-7 comments on do follow blogs with CommentLuv enabled and PR 3-4;
8. The total number of characters in the title was 31;
9. Finally, I’ve used the keyword phrase as the first words in the title;
10. That’s it, I guess;

How Google was showing the results during the first days

On the next day after publishing, I had a great result of getting to the 5th page of the search query;

The 2nd day gave me the 3rd page;

But.. when I began to comment, my result dropped to the 7th page. That was already the 3rd day after the publishing. A coincidence?

This is the funniest thing, that Google still didn’t count any of a backlink to my post;

Now Google is playing with the post showing it somewhere between the 10th and the 13th result pages. And I think it’s getting worse each day. Will see what happens, when Google would count those backlinks, I’ve made;

Why I haven’t got to the top results with that certain keyword phrase?

I’m not a SEO expert at all. I don’t have 10 years of experience. So, my opinion may be wrong, but I think, that this whole thing is about 2 factors. Backlinks to your website is the number 1 reason. The second reason is still your website’s pagerank. Now look at the above screenshot again and tell me why I’m not right, because I really lose to those competitors only because of these 2 factors :)

PS. By the time you’ll get to this post, my results may change significantly.

***

Video Dessert: «The Sneezing Baby Panda»

Baby Panda sneezes and scares her mommy :)

It’s 2010 now! It’s time to get real website traffic to your website or blog, or even better, if you have a blog as a “plus” to your website.

I’m going to speak about the most important factors, that generate website traffic today. If you’ve been looking for the most compact article about the modern ways of getting website traffic in 2010, then you’re at the right place. Be sure, that after the information from this post, the only left thing for you would be to start the action.

Let me ask you… what means “website traffic”? How do you imagine that? It’s important, because you can’t start getting website traffic, if you don’t know, what you are trying to get. Take 1 minute to think about it. Really. When you’re done, just go on reading.

So, What Means Website Traffic?

I hope, that you have the answer. Let’s compare. My answer is “you”. What was yours?

Anyways, “website traffic” really means “you”, because there’s nobody else, who can turn on the PC or laptop. It’s you, who looks for the information on the Internet; who votes for someone or something; who buys journals or some food, using PayPal; who sells products; who comments on blogs or on Facebook; who asks somebody to help at “Yahoo! Answers”; who recommends to watch the movie and so on.

Getting Website Traffic Means Attracting Other People.

That’s why it’s so important to understand, that website traffic means you and the other people like you. It’s not a click, nor a number of “views”, nor “5 stars” for the video, nor 1534 “unique visitors”. You’re dealing with real people like you. Remember to ask yourself “Would I like it?” before you show or offer something on the Internet.

I hope that was clear enough for the compact introduction. Let’s get on further.

Design of Your Website or Blog

Do not overdo with design of your website. There are 5 must-be-done things with your website design, that will help you to get more website traffic.

1. Try to make your website or blog navigation as easy, as possible. The deepest page should be 3-4 clicks from your home page;
2. Try to make the look of your website as friendly, as Google’s home page;
3. Use Photoshop (or similar software) to make sizes of your website images as small, as possible, but don’t lose the quality. I’ve used to keep it around 8-30 KB and that’s OK. Mostly it’s 8-12 KB;
4. Don’t make your website or blog look like NASCAR. The fewer ads, the better.
5. Remember to keep your code clean, because it’s your website loading speed, which would crucially affect your search engine rankings in 2010;

Choosing Domain Name

Well.. The shorter, the better. It’s easy, right? No. As the Internet becomes more and more popular with each day, it’s getting harder to pick a domain name, that you like. So.. it takes a little bit of your thinking to find the appropriate name for your website.

Here are 3 tips how to choose :

• Think of your niche.
  Try to get the most important keywords from it. And invent your domain name. For example, you’re going to write about travelling. Your name is Paul. Very good! Make use of it. How about www.TravellingWithPaul.com ? Yes, that was the big one. Well.. what about www.PaulsTravel.com? Not bad.. work on it;
• Use numbers instead of words.
  Example – www.2createawebsite.com. Though it’s rather long, it’s simple at the same time;
• Don’t forget about dashes.
  If you’ve picked www.PaulTravel.com and it’s occupied, try this – www.Paul-Travel.com. Not too bad, isn’t it?

Remember also, that your domain name is the very important part of your Internet face. It’s not the only one part though. And note, that you have only 1 chance to choose the appropriate domain name.

Difference between .com, .org, .net, .edu etc.

There’s no big difference between them at all. Someone says, that search engines would better index .edu sites, or that backlinks from .edu sites pass more rankings to your website. Do you believe it? I don’t, because just think of it.. if that’s true, then what’s the point in .com or .net? There’s no logical explanation, nor physical evidence. The only difference between them is that they’re supposed to help in grouping the growing number of website names:

• .com stands for – commercial;
• .org – organisation;
• .net – network;
• .mil – military;
• .gov – government;
• .edu – education.

Building Backlinks – Get More Website Traffic

Sounds good. Let’s take a look at ways of getting traffic from other sites by building backlinks. Let’s classify these ways.

Submit Your Website or Blog to Search Engines… or Not?

This is in past, when you had to submit your website to search engines. Now it’s different. Search engines will find you by themeselves or through some of your backlinks from other sites. You, actually, can submit the URL of your website or blog to search engines like Google, Yahoo! or MSN (Bing). This would, probably, get your site indexed a little bit faster, but not much.

Note, that there are no more different search engines, as many websites scream, offering you to submit to 1000s of search engines only for 5,95$. There was a time, when the number of search engines was huge, but most of them now are parts of Yahoo!, MSN or Google, others are simply dead.

Submitting to Directories

There are 2 general types of web directories:

• Website directories, that still accept sites;
• Website directories, that are dead or not updated.

There are also 4 secondary types of them:

• Paid directories;
• Free directories;
• Directories, that want you to put a reciprocal link to your site;
• Combined directories, that relate to one of the above type only, or two of them, or all of them.

And, finally, there are 3 sorts of web directories:

• Website directory – check out this list of top website directories;
• Blog directory (for blogs only) – begin from these 50+ blog directories;
• RSS directory (for blogs only) – start submitting your blog from these 30+ RSS directories;

The most important are only 2 of all of them by today – DMOZ directory and Yahoo! directory. At the very moment, I’ve submitted my site to both of them a month ago or so. Still no answer. But… I didn’t put any reciprocal link from them, nor pay for submission. May be that’s the reason, may be not. Anyway, I’ll try to resubmit in 2-3 months. I guess, that it’s hard, but it’s worth it. Will speak about it later.

Submitting Articles to Article Directories

I’d recommend to use only 1-3 article directories, because all of them want you to submit the unique content. How do you suppose to do that with 50 article directories?

Anyways, you’ll get very nice amount of traffic from article directories. They rank higher, than your site, when you begin or in the process of growing. So, it’s easier to reach the top of search engines to drive visitors to your own website or blog.

Submit Your Posts to Social Bookmarking Sites

Begin from this list of 70+ do follow and nofollow social bookmarking sites.

There are 2 crucial rules, submitting to social bookmarkers:

• Submit posts, stories, articles with the unique titles and descriptions. Otherwise, you’ll be penalised by search engines;
• Choose the right category for your submission, because this affects on your visitors, that you get.

Getting Website Traffic Commenting on Blogs

I’d recommend to comment on “do follow” Blogs with CommentLuv enabled, if you’re hunting for a big number of backlinks. This way you’ll get a constant and continual website traffic, but not too targeted, because if you comment a lot, then, probably, your comments are short and barely visible.

To get targeted website traffic commenting on blogs, think of your comments. Leave comments, if you really feel, that you’re able to add something valuable or to refute some fact from the commented post.

Decide for yourself what traffic you need.

Backlinks from Social Media Profiles

For example, you’ve registered on Twitter. Put a link to your website in your profile! It should be like this – http://www.example.com . The more, the better. You, actually, could just run through all social media websites you know just to register, in order to put a free backlink. Believe me, all of them will be indexed as an external links to your website.

My result of getting backlinks from social media profiles at Google.

Use Trackbacks

Yes, trackbacking is another way to get backlinks to your website.

How to get a good trackback?

Trackback is a blog feature. In most cases if your blog is powered by WordPress, then you can enable this feature in the admin panel.

If you link to another blog, then that blog can accept your trackback, which means, that you get a backlink to your post. This way of getting traffic is even better, than commenting. Though the trackback link usually appears near comments, visitors understand, that the author trusts this link. This affects readers opinion about your blog, which increases a chance, that they would follow the link and, moreover, would subscribe to your blog or come back later.

Learn SEO to Get More Traffic from Search Engines

SEO is the abbreviation of the phrase “Search Engine Optimization”. Today it’s so popular, that there’s no problems at all, if you wish to improve your SEO skills, because there are thousands or even millions of blogs, that could explain how and why to do this or that.

Why the traffic from search engines is so valuable?

Try to track what you’re doing, when you’re looking for some answers or showcases. Of course, you’re going to Google and type several words, that you think are associated with your problem. Then you follow some of the results, and if that was relevant to your question, you feel satisfied and, probably, you bookmark this site or put it to your favorites. This is the power of SEO, because those sites, that are in the top of search queries, would be most likely followed by you and the others.

Make your aim #1 to get to the top of Google with your keyphrases. In order to do that, learn SEO.

Ways to Make Your Traffic Come Back

This is the most interesting part :) OK, you’re already getting traffic. But if you analyze it, you, probably, can see, that there is a huge bounce rate around 70-90%. This is no good. You must make it different. Make another aim for you to decrease your website’s bounce rate, which would help you to grow your audience.

15 tips to make your traffic come back:

• Make your RSS feed buttons visible;
• Publish a new post as often, as possible;
• Create contests and think of good rewards;
• Don’t make posts or articles too big;
• Use images;
• Use CommentLuv for your comments;
• Make your blog do follow;
• Track your most popular posts and use it for your future posts;
• Make “Tops” of your posts, articles or podcasts;
• Refresh your old posts and mention that in your latest posts;
• Make your pages full of things to click. People love it;
• Make your website or blog look alive;
• Differ from others to make your traffic love you*;
• Try to express your thoughts simple;
• Be the first in everything**;

*What means to be different from others?

That’s your key to success. If everyone screams, that they could help – scream, that you can show. If everyone speaks about how cool is using Feedburner – write a post about Feedburner minuses etc.

**How to be the first, if there are so many competitors?

It’s not that hard, as it may seem, because it’s about understanding the meaning of being the first. You can be the first with your own way of expression. If you’re late with some news, look at the news from the original side and bomb it out. You’ll be the first.

For example, Robert Pattinson is being awarded for something. Ok.. you’re not the first one, who announced it. Not a problem. Write about his top 10 latest awards, including this one. People would, probably, be interested in this kind of info, because he’s currently being discussed in news. See? That’s way simple.

Paid Ways to Get Website Traffic – Worth It or Not?

Though it’s still popular today to buy traffic, I won’t ever recommend you to do that, unless you’re working online just in order to sell big stuff.

This is about your reputation. So, if you’re niche is about travelling or blogging, then don’t use this method. Would you like it, if you’d knew, that you were bought…? Disgusting, isn’t it?

There are tons of free ways. The only thing you have to do is to think a little about your own way through all of the known ways.

What Web Traffic Do You Need?

This is as important, as knowing the meaning of website traffic. So, let’s look at the main types of web traffic:

Social Media Traffic – Those are people, who surf through sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Propeller etc. They submit your stuff, if they like it. They comment, they ask. Mostly, these people are curious about all latest trends in social media.

Silent Readers – This group of people are those, who just read something, that they are interested in. Don’t expect them to comment on your blog. “Silent readers” come from search engines. Most of them won’t subscribe to your website or blog, but they would bookmark it or put to favorites if your post or article is what they want.

Traffic from Banners – Or in other words, paid traffic. This type of website traffic is risky. From one hand, you’re the guy with money for them. From the other hand, you have some default respect, which could become a wall against your personality. So, think twice before buying places for your ads (banners).

Real World Traffic – The precious one. They come to your site directly. They’ve heard about you from their friends or from the news. You have a high default respect from them.

Bad Traffic – They’ve heard some bad things about you. Their opinion about you is below the normal level. But still.. they are your website traffic. So, when they come, be ready to change their mind. That’s not easy though.

Return Traffic – You can easily call this type of traffic – your readers. There is a big chance, that they will subscribe to your blog, because they’re on the way to get used to visit your blog.

Think of your own ways of converting one type of website traffic to another.

New Ways of Getting Traffic

Of course, most of the known ways can bring you some constant amount of visitors. But.. you know, the Internet and its social media is crazy today. Each and every day there’s a new way for anything. I look for 2010 and I’m so excited about what will happen with the usual ways of getting traffic. So.. follow the trends. Look for extraordinary ways of getting traffic. Because if you’re the discoverer, you’ll get the best award for it.

For example, I’ve recently discovered for myself, that a simple button “I like it” at Google Reader could bring some nice number of visitors, which means that the more subscriptions I have, the more traffic I can attract just by clicking the single button “I like it”. Check it out yourself and find out how it works.

The Conclusion

Well.. I hope you’ve loved this article. I’ve reviewed all of the most important aspects of getting website traffic for the beginning of 2010, and I hope, that you’ve found for yourself something useful here.

If you’d like to add something, make sure to leave a respond below.

***

PS. Here’s another amazing article to get more web traffic in 2010. You’ll find there some kick-ass methods, that are used today.

I’ve recently got the main idea, how Google decides whether to come on your website or not. The most ridiculous is that it’s all said by Google. Somewhy we ignore what Google offer us to learn about indexing. But still.. this is all so true.

I won’t write a book about this. I’ll just show those things, that really matter, when it comes to indexing your web pages by Google.

Why Google stopped indexing my website?

• You’ve deleted lots of URLs from your website;
• You spam. That’s not good;
• You’ve used duplicated pages;
• Your robots.txt file blocks too many pages. Google bot doesn’t like you;
• Your updates are rare. Maybe you should make them a little bit more often?
• You have too small total number of pages. Less than 50-100 pages, right?
• You have an ugly code;
• You don’t have any external link, or there are only some of them;
• You overuse the “noindex” tag;

The above events are the most common ones. How you should fix them? First of all, read the above events once again and do exactly the opposite. That’s really it.

How long you should wait until Google again indexes you?

• Don’t wait, he will;
• Focus on publishing;
• Focus on your external links;

The most important thing, that I’ve got is that all the mistakes, that you make in the beginning do not mean anything, when you have tons of good and quality content/pages.

2 little advices

1. Do not write too quality content in the beginning. But write a lot. When you have several hundreds of pages, Google bot indexes you a lot more often. When he does, you shouldn’t be afraid, that someone would steal your content before it’s indexed.
2. Trust Google, not Blogs.

Have you heard about Google Keyword Tool? The tool that is extremely useful if you want to compete with search requests in Google. It’s very simple, though it needs some attention in some places. So let’s look how it works.

Step 1. What Do You Need First of All?

Look at your website. It might be your blog, youtube channel or any other type of website. Try to get the idea of what keywords you need. Write them somewhere.

Step 2. Meeting with Google Keyword Tool.

Let’s have a quick look at this tool. Here’s the first thing you need to do. Choose the language and the country:


Isn’t that great? For example, if you’re living in Africa and want to promote your website in United States then all you want to do here is to select “English” and “United States”.

But that’s not all. Let’s go further. See this?

Two options. Whether you enter your own keywords and see how popular they are… or you enter the URL of your website or some text from your page. Then Google suggests you almost all possible relevant phrases that had been searched within last several months from the region you’ve selected.

Step 3. My Example of Keywords Research.

I’ll show it working on my example. Firstly I take 2 words from the topic of this post – “keywords research”. Here’s what I get:

Click to zoom
We can see here lots of stuff. “Advertiser competition” info we need least of all. Just because it’s more likely for Google Adword owners. All the rest info is what we really need.
“Local Search Volume: October” shows us the amount of requests of similar or exact phrases in the specified country. Since we’ve chosen “United States” you can see on my screenshot that only 390 people looked for it from United States during October.
Next column “Global Monthly Search Volume” shows the statistics of all requests of this phrase for the last 12 months from all countries performed on Google and Search Network. That’s 60,500 for now. Wow.. At this stage I don’t think that iWoodpecker could compete that number, because there are already tons of relevant material on much older websites. But… I don’t belive that I should choose instead – “google keywords research tool” (global statistics is 28 requests) because it has less of requests which means that I could be better searched with this phrase. Why? I’d rather wait till my website grows up a little bit and I’ll pick something average now like “google keyword research” (global statistics is 3,600 requests) instead of “keywords research”(global statistics is 60,500 requests). Anyways, it depends on your plans and strategies for your promoting.

Step 4. Let’s Go Deeper with Google Keyword Tool.

Look for “Choose columns to display:” and choose: Estimated Avg. CPC, Search Volume Trends and Highest Volume Occured in. These info columns are made for some detailed information. Don’t we need that? :) Sure we do..
“Estimated Avg. CPC” shows the cost per click of the specified ad related to requested keyword phrase. These numbers are useful if you have Google Adsense, though numbers would be a bit different for you because the shown costs relate to Google Adwords. What you have to note is that the more money pay advertisers the more you earn from visitors’ clicks on your ad blocks using Adsense. Got it now how helpful are these average CPC numbers?
Now.. “Search Volume Trends”. They show us just months when people mostly performed requests with our keyword phrases. With these stats you know that sometimes the decreased visitors number on some of your pages are not because of your bad SEO knowledges. You can also calculate when you can wait for increasing of your visitors.
The last one is “Highest Volume Occured” column. That’s not that important because it shows us only the month when was the highest volume of requests of our keyword phrase. We can look for that info from “Search Volume Trends”.

Step 5. Generating our keywords from the content.

Click to zoom
Here we may choose whether a URL of our page or the content of this page. I like the second variant because I can pick a specific part of my page’s text, where the entire content is described mostly. That’ll give me much better result than pasting my URL or the whole content of the page. But look for what works best for you.
When the above part is done click “get keyword ideas” button and choose the variant/s you like according to my example from the above “Steps”

Step 6. When You Rush.

You know that when it comes to optimizing of your pages (I hope you do that sometime) you rush. Yes, you go through your pages superficially and I understand that. That’s why my advice on this topic is to use only 3 columns. The listed keywords that Google generate and 2 other columns: “Local Search Volume” and “Global Monthly Search Volume”. I hope you’ve figured out why.

You should remember that all this stuff brings you free traffic from search engines.