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+---- Thread: It's not all about rankings (/showthread.php?tid=81)
It's not all about rankings - webnetics - 14-04-08
Finding the balance between presentation, readability and the right keywords can take practice. First and foremost, think like your visitors and understand exactly what they're looking for. Does the layout of your site draw your readers in? Can each page be accessed within three clicks? Are there any bottlenecks or drop-off points? Study your traffic stats and use Google Analytics for valuable insights into your visitors' behaviour.
Assuming that you've got it right without observing the flow of site traffic and creating conversion goals is a big mistake. Make sure that your content is indexable — Flash-heavy sites with little or no text might look nice, but they may not be so easily indexed by search engine crawlers.
Users can arrive at your site from any point, so you'll need to give them a reason to drill further into it — but avoid offering too much, too soon. Cramming blocks of keyword-rich copy into one long page may kill any connection you've created. Consider splitting up your pages and revising your navigation menu to reflect the breadth of your site. It's also a good idea to add a site-map.html and a row of sub navigation text links to major pages at the bottom of each page.
Investing time in tightening up your copy and presentation will improve the user experience, and may pique your creativity. That can only help you to make the most of search engine exposure.
Tips
In today's competitive marketplace, the success of your business website and your SE0 campaign is often critical to the success of the company as a whole. But how do you go about measuring that success? Should you be looking at search engine rankings? Traffic? Page views? Or something else? Knowing which metrics to keep an eye on can make the difference between moderately and highly effective SEC). The following tips explain which metrics are important — as well as showing you the ones that aren't.
1 Log files
One of the ways that many webmasters measure success is whether their website shows up in the Google listings for specific keyword phrases. This is OK as long as you're using targeted keyword phrases. More important and telling metrics, however, are found in your log files and web analytics program. You'll find a wealth of information by looking at the metrics that are, most likely, already on your server.
2 Conversion goals Many people also look at the overall page views. This isn't a very telling measurement, as smaller sites will show smaller numbers. The idea of an SEO campaign isn't to get people to look at every page of your website, but to get them to perform an action, such as making a purchase.
3 Analytics programs The most important metrics include the keyword phrases that people use to find you, as well as which of those phrases (and site visitors) converted from a simple user to a buyer. Most analytics programs will provide you with this information like our VrStats, which you can use to decide how to optimise your site for additional, targeted traffic.
4 Keyword research Armed with that important information, you'll want to perform additional keyword research to find the phrases that relate to what you offer, but from which you aren't currently seeing search engine visitors. Then it will simply be a matter of optimising your existing pages for those additional keyword phrases, and/or adding new pages to the site.