18 replies to this topic

[projectphp]

I never "officially" check my rankings because I really don't have this concrete keyword list that I optimize for.      I look at my webstats each week, look at my sales/revenue, average pages viewed per visit, and average time each visitor spent on my pages and go from there.  As long as my webstats look good to me I'm a happy camper! 

That is 100% the way a site should be run.

So many people get reporting wrong, and worry about rankings all day long. Julie's way is absolutely the best way to measure a site's performance. Who cares what your rankings are if people don't buy anything, and even without a rankings boost, many people can improve conversions rates and the bottom line.

Optimising a site is about making it better; constantly better, in every way. Focussing on real metrics is far more productive than looking at rubbishy ones like rankings, and what is better, if you otimise for better conversions, you make more money to spend in the long term on SEO and driving traffic, which now converts better etc etc.

Great post Julie

[arlen]

Thank you Julie for the excellent post(s). I think you present a realistic, practical and attainable approach to developing and managing a site .. an online business. I just can't see getting caught up on the infinite details and most-recent-current-working theories when search results obviously can't be formulated, at least long term. Good to hear from a retailer who has had good results without playing all the games. What really matters is attracting qualified traffic and converting that to real sales. If you can do that, you will be successful. At least that's the way I choose to look at it.

Only 10.9% of my visitors enter my site through the home page. The other 89% enter my site through hundreds of keywords found on my product and/or category pages. The average time a visitor stays on my site and pages viewed per visit has increased considerably since I've started to focus on "writing for my customers from the heart". I can honestly say there's only a small percentage of keywords that I actually think about/focus on.

This is a really important statement. I've never heard it put in clearer "real-world" terms. Gives me faith in the changes I'm working on now.

[arlen]

Nathan - my advice would be to know your target audience and write copy that appeals to that audience. Write your copy naturally for your visitors and you'll find that you naturally use your keywords. Writing for any type of algorithm is a bad long-term strategy because they algorithm is going to change.

Ian - Forget formulas. Focus on your competition and your visitors. Compete against your competitors and make sure your visitors are happy - everything else is taking your eye off the ball.

projectphp - Optimising a site is about making it better; constantly better, in every way

Really good comments too ... just what I needed to read tonight.

Edited by arlen, 28 February 2005 - 01:32 AM.

[randfish]

I really don't think I can put enough emphasis on term weight (the tf*idf formula). Even if you write a fantastic page, this is really the ony way to test and see if the search algorithms will know that the page's primary focus is the on the keyword phrase you want.

I'll try to post something more comprehensive about term weight, but needless to say for those of you who were in the advanced keyword research tools session today at SES, this is something that has existed for a long time and I personally have achieved some great results with it. It's not a magic formula, it's just the same method that Search engines use to detect the focus of a page.