Increase Your Web Page Traffic By Up to 100%!

Increase Your Web Page Traffic By Up to 100%!
By Per Strandberg (c) 2004

Have you optimized your web pages in order to receive traffic
from the major search engines (SE) like Google, Yahoo or Msn?

If you have, then I'll show you a simple method you can use to
increase your traffic further by up to 50% or 100%!

The most common practice is to optimize each page with one
keyword and by "keyword" I mean a search phrase. The reason for
this is that in order to be rated high in the SE, the keyword
needs to be found in the page's title, in the headlines and to
be included a number of times in the main text.

You can have a maximum of two relevant but different keywords
included in the title. If you include more than that the
optimization for those additional keywords will dilute your
result.

This is because the optimal length of the title is limited
to only a few words for effective SE optimization.

The best option is to optimize for just one keyword per page.

The two most useful tools for keyword research are
http://WordTracker.com and the Overture keyword inventory tool
http://inventory.overture.com.

Both will give you an estimate on how many searches are made on
keywords on the Web.

WordTracker is a pay service which also measures the number of
competing web sites for keywords. Overture's inventory tool is
a free service. The main purpose is to give bidders a way to
measure how many times each keyword is being searched. Overture
is the leading pay-per-click search engine. Its keyword inventory
tool is not made for SE optimization research.

However, that is what a lot of people use it for. WordTracker
keyword statistics are better than Overture's. Overture uses
an aggregation from Overture's partners and often the traffic
statistics are diluted by automatic queries.

If you take full advantage of Overture's and WordTracker's
keyword statistics you can increase the traffic you receive
from the SE substantially.

Here is how!

Let's take an example!

In this case we want a web page to be optimized for the keyword
"backup program"!

Here are the numbers taken from Overture:

999 backup program
178 backup free program
83 backup make program thoughtfully
70 backup computer program
69 backup dvd program
54 backup program xxasdf
53 add backup program remove
47 backup dvd program xxasdf
38 backup free program ware
37 backup software program
35 backup data program
30 backup drive hard program
30 backup program window xp
29 cd backup program
29 backup program window
26 best backup program
25 backup dvd free program

Here are the numbers taken from WordTracker

52 backup programs
49 backup program
17 free backup programs
16 windows nt 4.0 backup recovery disk programs
11 free backup program
11 backup installed programs
9 windows xp home edition backup programs
8 how do you backup installed programs
7 free outlook express backup programs
7 mac backup programs
5 win2k freeware backup programs
5 cd backup program
5 database backup programs

Of course the statistics from Overture and WordTracker are not
always accurate. What is important is that from these tools you
can extract a lot of extra words so the exact number is not so
important. Use them together with your main keyword or spread
them out throughout your page.

Any combination of your main keyword together with one of the
extra words will give you a boost in ranking. This is because
you have already optimized your page for the main term "backup
program".

If someone searches for "best backup program" and you have
included "best" in front of "backup program" only once in
the text you will show up high in the results. You will also
probably show up high even if the word "best" is not next to
"backup program".

Extra words as candidates to include in our case are:
"Free, computer, dvd, add, remove, software, data, drive hard,
windows xp, cd, windows, recovery disk, installed, home edition,
outlook express, backup, win2k and database".

Special Note on Overture's Tool:

The number of searches for "backup program" is 999. This number
also includes "backup program", "backup programs", "program
backup" and "program backups". Both in singular and plural.

This gives a somewhat misleading figure for the keyword,
especially for searches that include many individual words.

Which of the word combinations have the highest number of
searches?

You just don't know! You have to use your common sense.

Overture often lists the different words in alphabetical order
which give misleading information. For example, people don't
usually search for "backup drive hard program". They are much
more likely doing searches for "hard drive backup programs".
Or "backup programs for hard drives". Words like "to", "for",
and "on" are ignored by the SE.

This method to include extra words works best if the page
contains at least 400 - 500 words. A page that contains more
words is better.

If you sprinkle the text with some of the suggested words on
your page, you will increase the number of visitors you get from
the SE substantially.

This does not mean that you should sacrifice the quality. Don't
use it for keyword stuffing.

Include words that fit in naturally on your page.

The advantage of doing this for the less searched phrases are:

1. There is less competition for those keywords.

2. Searches for the keywords are more specific, which means
a more precise search. Visitors are more likely to click on
your link and also to respond positively to your message.

3. Web users are more likely to look beyond the first search
page. This is because the searches are more specific and other
results on the list are more likely to be on target.

Recently, in November 2003 and January 2004, Google made changes
on how it values web pages. Small web sites with few inbound
links were hit hard. Many websites lost good ranking or worse
disappeared all together for important keywords.

What disappeared from the SE results was in most cases only the
primary keywords for each page. In our example that would have
been "backup program".

By adding related keyword combinations together with your
primary keyword you would still be found in Google's search for
a large number of keyword combinations. For example, in our case,
we would be found for "best backup program".

================================================================
Per Strandberg is a software designer and Internet marketer!
Learn the latest in niche marketing! Subscribe to The Niche
Exploration Newsletter! at ==> http://www.niche-exploration.com
Find information on data storage and data security at
http://www.data-backup-and-storage.com
================================================================

This article was originally published in SiteProNews, one of the
Net's most widely read webmaster newsletters. An online version
of this article and other articles can be found at:
http://www.sitepronews.com/archives.html
================================================================