I am ranked #1 for that silly phrase at Google. So What?

Here's a secret. You can be ranked #1 at Google for the phrase "Waterfall Watches" if you put the phrase on your page 4 times and in metatags twice. How do I know that? I did it in 2001 and still rank number one in Google for the phrase in 2005. On another of my sites I rank #1 for the phrase "Screeching Camels" by simply putting it on the page once in a comment about silly SEO guarantees.

I'll wager that many phrases you've targeted for yourbusiness are almost as silly and deliver NO traffic to your pages from the search engines. Don't take that too personally. Simply look at your traffic statistics to see what phrases are bringing visitors to your web site. If your logs show no delivered traffic for keywords you thought were golden, you've targeted the wrong phrases.

I'm always fascinated when discussions of search engines focus excessively on ranking of a particular site in oneparticular search engine without checking correspondingstatistics about referred traffic delivered to the sitefrom the targeted keyword phrase. Referred search visits from engines is not taken into account. Anyone who looksat their rankings without looking at how much traffic isreferred and DELIVERED to your site through the rankingsis missing the most important part of the story!

When you check your site traffic statistics for wherevisitors are coming from and in what numbers, for whichkeyword searches and from which search engines, you willbe astonished to see that things you think are importantare sometimes not so important. I've struggled for yearsto gain top rankings for "Small Business Ecommerce" andhave achieved #1 at Google #5 at MSN and #13 at Yahoo(at this writing).

But guess what? Nobody searches for that phrase insignificant enough numbers to deliver any traffic fromit! I'm not saying that this was wasted effort, becausein the over 1000 pages at WebSite101 we have enoughrelated phrases that the targeted phrase contributesto the rank of hundreds of related phrases. "Open SourceEcommerce" gets huge traffic for one single page, rankedat # 29 in Yahoo, #7 at MSN and #1 in Google (as of thiswriting).

But the really interesting thing is that even on phrasesthat rank equally well across all three major engines,Google delivers referred traffic at a rate of 65% comparedto MSN at less than 1% and Yahoo about 5% of all referredvisitor traffic. In NO case does Yahoo or MSN refer anyclickthroughs at higher than 10% of all referred traffic.

Referred traffic being visitors that clicked on your linkfrom search results or links. This applies both in singleinstances for specific keywords and cumulatively for allreferred traffic.

Hear this very clearly - it has nothing to do with ranking!There are dozens of search phrases that visitors havesearched on all three of those engines that deliver trafficto my site that I can't find my own site for in the top 100results at ANY search engine. In every case, Google deliversmore than twice the traffic for every keyword combinationthan does MSN or Yahoo!. In many cases, I rank HIGHER onboth Yahoo and MSN for many of those phrases, yet Googledelivers far more referred traffic for those phrases rankedhigher at MSN and Yahoo! Does that make any sense?

If your referred traffic from top rankings at MSN and Yahoosend you no traffic, why be concerned that you rank wellwith either of them? This same scenario has played outacross dozens of client sites I've reviewed trafficstatistics for. No matter how the site is structured,no matter how many pages they have, no matter what keywordsthey are targeting.

Search engine referred traffic from Google is always ALWAYS 2 times higher than the other two and very often as much as10 times. If we ranked engines, NOT on number of searchesperformed, but on how much traffic they refer, then Googlewould be more than twice as highly ranked in all cases.

If Google disappeared tomorrow, there would be somedramatically reduced visitor numbers for ALL sites acrossthe web. We would, every single one of us, lose over halfof our (organic) search engine referred traffic. Look atyour traffic statistics for natural search engine referredtraffic (not PPC) volume and which keywords are currentlyworking to deliver that traffic as far more important thanyour specific # keyword ranking on those search engines.

Avoid the practice of "Keyword Voodoo" to rank for words that nobody searches. Google "Keyword Voodoo" and you'llfind me ranked 5 times for that phrase on page one of thesearch engine results page. "Reciprocal Linking Turkey"will give you the same result, showing my article onseveral web sites. Each of those does me no good at all and brings no more search engine referred traffic than does my number one ranking for "Invisible Entrepreneurs" used in the title of this article.

Target the wrong keywords and you will become one of those Invisible Entrepreneurs.

copyright © July 14, 2005 by Mike Banks Valentine

Mike Banks Valentine practices ethical search optimization through content aggregation and creation for your website Optimizing press releases for keyword density - distributed online for visibility & more effective link building

Contact Mike at: http://www.seoptimism.com/SEO_Contact.htm

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