SEO Techniques & My Own Sites – An Ongoing Case Study
A New Series of Posts Where I’ll Share How to Use SEO for Better Results
There’s a new category of posts I decided to add to my blog today – about how I personally achieve top organic rankings on my own websites by using SEO techniques. I want these posts to be a on-going conversation, a journal of sorts, about how I am able to achieve high rankings and then maintain those rankings. I want to emphasize that the rankings I am sharing and discussing are ones that bring me many, many targeted visitors. These are not top-ten ranking keyword phrases that produce zero traffic!
Why Have I Decided to Bare it All With You? Because I’m a Teacher at Heart
I know what the stumbling blocks are to trying to learn how to optimize your website or blog in order that it can rank highly for the keywords that really do have great search volumes. At one point more than a few years ago, I wasn’t an expert in SEO! I had to start from zero knowledge and move up from there. I hope that what I share with you will really help you be more successful with your search engine rankings … and that means you’ll hopefully have more targeted visitor traffic.
Alright, let me explain more about the keyword I used and is shown in this screenshot (taken today March 25, 2008) – the very competitive and good traffic generating keyword: garden art project.
Please note: today I have a #1 position … #2 has disappeared. Oh well … that’s the joy of dealing with the search engines. I’ve done NOTHING at all to change the web page or the website. I know that this is just something that happens from time to time. Rankings can come, and rankings can go. But the important thing is that I am still #1
OK, let me give you some insight as to how I have gotten this #1 (and most times #2 also) ranking. “Garden art project” sure seems pretty general, doesn’t it? In certain ways it is, thusly it is harder to rank highly for, much harder than if I had targeted it to be a more specific keyword phrase, such as “floral garden art project”.
But, that keyword is one of the main keywords that describes the overall theme (niche) of the website www.The-Artistic-Garden.com. So, I chose to optimize for that term.
How did I achieve and then maintain a top ranking like this for a long time? The simple fact is because I have properly optimized the Title tag and Description meta tag and the content on that page with the term. I will admit there is a bit of “advanced” SEO happening with the optimization technique I have employed in this situation, but not that advanced that I can’t discuss it with someone who is learning about SEO.
I’ll be talking about all the ins and outs, variables and such that can affect your rankings in future posts in this series “My SEO Journal: How I Have Achieved & Maintained Top Rankings”. If you want to optimize your site by yourself, then I do believe you’ll find my true life examples in future posts to be full of great tips.
See you soon!
How Many Words Should A Page Have For High SEO Rankings?
Is There a “Best Length” SEO Guideline When Writing Content?
I have had more than one SEO client ask me how many words there must be for each page of content they write for their site. I do understand their concern that providing informative content is part of building a successful website or blog, but quite honestly there really isn’t a specific number of words that determines good or poor search engine rankings.
As a matter of fact, I’ve seen it advised in more than one place that for top rankings, page length really should be between 400 and 600 words (give or take a little, depending on whose erroneous information you read). Or, I’ve seen it stated to never ever write less than 250 words. None of this information is correct!
The Search Engine Spiders Don’t Give a Hoot About the Number of Words on Your Page
You can absolutely positively 100% trust that there are not a specific number of words that your pages or blog posts need to contain in order for your site to have the ability to rank highly and to obtain high quality targeted search engine traffic.
The search engines get smarter and smarter every month, and with that comes the understanding that the number of words on a page does NOT determine it’s value from a ranking standpoint. But, the number of words you write does matter to your visitors. Are you providing the information they came to your site hoping to find?
If you are addressing the topic at hand and provide a thorough, well written page of content pertaining to the topic, then whether you’ve written 200 words or 1,200 words is totally OK as long as what … ? Right … as long as you provide targeted, keyword focused information. Your visitors were searching for this information, and you ought to be providing excellent content for those visitors.
How about some help to narrow down the keywords you ought to be weaving into your content? I suggest you try this free-to-use keyword tool from Wordtracker.
Your pages can be as long or as short as you feel appropriate in order to say what you want to convey to your visitor. Every page or post is different, and in that respect each has a different purpose. Quite honestly, the number of words on a page is not a search engine issue at all, but really a marketing issue.
So, do your best to always over-deliver quality content on every page you write. The search engine spiders know that each page is unique unto itself. If I may use a bit of poetic license here, I can tell you that as far as the spiders are concerned … “bean counters they are not!”
