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 The following SEO Optimization post was submitted by Linda Bustos fromElastic Path.
Smart bloggers often use keyword research tools to brainstorm “long tail” opportunities and keyword niches. These keywords are then worked into blog post titles, image attributes, headings and body copy as part of an SEO strategy, knowing that this “low hanging fruit” can drive some very valuable traffic.
While this is a great strategy, it’s not without its downsides. Keyword research tools are often expensive, the data can be unreliable or too general to reflect your readership. If you use Google Analytics, you’re sitting on a very valuable keyword research tool that’s free, accurate and can tell you so much about your readers.
I’d like to share a “hack” with you - how you can use Google Analytics to identify your most valuable keyword referrals, and how you can re-optimize your posts to raise your rank and drive more traffic for these keywords.
Using Google Analytics to Identify Hot Keywords
1. Log into Google Analytics, and select (from the left hand gray menu) “Traffic Sources” and then “Keywords”
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2. Select “Non-Paid” to isolate organic traffic (if you’re using Google Adwords)
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3. Select a generous date range (not just recent content, show trends over a few months to a year)
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4. Scroll to the bottom of the page and select “500″ rows
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5. Now we’re ready to get our hands dirty. I’m going to use my own site as an example (because it’s the only blog for which I have analytics access!) from now on. The current goal of Get Elastic is to grow the subscriber base. So I’m interested in what keywords attract new visitors and have a low bounce rate, assuming these visitors like to check out other related content. For you, it might be which keyword referrals convert well. In that case, you’d want to flip your view to “Goal Conversion” and sort results by clicking on “Goal Conversion Rate” or “Per Visit Goal Value”:
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Back to our example. Scanning my keyword referral list, I notice a couple stand out with lower bounce rates than average:
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6. Now I’m going to check out my current positions in Google to see if there’s room for improvement. I make sure I’ve signed out of any Google Accounts to avoid a personalized search skew, or even better - check in an alternate web browser while signed out of any Google Accounts.
Fair enough, rankings are nothing to obsess about. But we know the difference in click through above and below the fold!
Checking for “Facebook ecommerce,” Get Elastic is already number one. But “Twitter marketing” has room for improvement:
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Get Elastic’s positions 8 and 9 are sending traffic, could I triple that by cracking the top 3? Twitter marketing is currently a hot topic - many new blog posts about it every week and potentially more searches as awareness builds and people start taking it seriously. I should also be looking at protecting my post’s visibility as well.
“Almost” 7 Ways to Re-Optimize Your Posts
Now I take a look at my post that is ranking for “Twitter marketing”. I’m looking for non-spammy ways to beef up keywords in the Page Title, Title Tag, post tags, image attributes, H1, H2, H3 etc. Anywhere but changing the keywords in the URL. These SEO basics are usually considered when writing the post, but sometimes you discover “surprise winners” you never expected would send you such good traffic.
Then I start asking myself questions:
1. Are there other related posts on my blog that I can link back to the “Twitter marketing” post using keyword-rich anchor text? Can I tag them with this keyword phrase to make an indexable category page (even if it’s not one of the main sidebar categories)?
2. Can I write a follow-up post on my blog? Can I seed it in any relevant social news sites (Digg clones) in my niche?
3. Can I build links to it by writing related posts on my other blogs?
4. Can I write guest articles for other sites that link back to it?
5. Do I have blogger friends who will link back to it?
6. Are there “Twitter marketing” resource (link) lists that I can get included on? Yep, this takes old fashioned networking to achieve. One way to get a webmaster’s attention is to run a link validation check on their website, and send them a kind email pointing out the broken link, and mentioning your post may also be of interest to their visitors. (Hint for finding these lists, type in {keyword} + “links,” “resources,” “top 10,” “articles” etc. into the search engine, and manually check the results. Or run backlink checks on the results above you.)
7. Can I buy links to the post? (Just kidding)
Measuring Impact
Unfortunately it’s difficult to attribute subscriber increases to this technique. But you can measure rankings and traffic. You’ll want to make note of your current Google ranking before your tweaks. And you can always measure if traffic has increased month by month by adjusting your date ranges in Google Analytics.
Of course, this is a time-consuming practice. But identifying “money keywords” for your site visitors using your own stats can be an effective tactic in reaching your blogging goals in 2008.
Linda Bustos is the Emerging Media Analyst for Elastic Path, an ecommerce software vendor. Linda blogs daily about Internet marketing (SEO, social media marketing, email marketing etc) with a special focus on ecommerce at Get Elastic.
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