SEO

What Keywords Rank You Highest?

Lorelle raised a blogging challenge for this week. She wants to know what search keywords (when used on Google) bring your site up to the top of the list.

Your blog challenge this week is to research what word or phrase makes your blog number one in Google search results.

It’s an interesting challenge, one that will demand a lot from many bloggers. Fortunately, I know that I have a set of keywords that bring Educated to the number one position:

ultimate static front page

Give it a shot, and report back on either mine or Lorelle’s blog. Good luck!

Changes Are Good, But Somethings Don’t Change

My experimenting with my site(s) has brought thousands of changes to it (them). I’ve played with templates and themes, modules, and hundreds of other features and tweaks. But there is one thing I’ve learned (not the hard way, yet): Leave URLs alone. Search engines need URLs to work with your site. If they all suddenly change, they may be looking at nothing, or your site will get lost forever.

It’s very tempting to all of a sudden change your permalink structure, or suddenly switch to them. Unless you have absolutely no choice in the matter, either take ‘em or leave ‘em at the beginning. One change in the middle will disturb the SEO status’s equilibrium (that a new one), with potentially lethal effects on the site’s ranking. Jonathan agrees with me.

I haven’t documented this, but it may be something that you would want to keep in mind. Some things are better off “like old times,” and left undisturbed. Perhaps I will report on this again in the future and see if my theory has proven itself.

Best Traffic Booster: Content Is King

After looking through my stats in Google Analytics lately, I noticed a trend in my search engine referrals. Ever since my post about my experience with the Math A Regents, I received dozens of hits from Google and other search engines. In addition, various other posts (including my mention of the Windows XP Royale theme) have brought me reliable traffic, which indicates that they are what people are looking for.

Rule numero uno: Make lots of good content. People (and search engines) look for pages that have something useful to say and that say it well. If possible, use spell checking (or copy and paste the text into another app and spell-check it there) before publishing you articles. Google Hacks says that with the advent of spell checking from search engines, spelling is as important to your content as water is to you (I like that metaphor).

Another trick I’ve discovered is to write in a timely fashion. Timing is a key factor in getting traffic. If you write about skiing and snowboarding, late fall and winter is probably the best time. Similarly, the optimal timeframe for content on roller coasters or surfing is late spring and summer. For example, if I would have written about the Math A Regents exam in August, I don’t think I would have as many hits (also, people were using “January 2007″ in their search phrases, which brought them to the archive page of that timeframe, but this is a side effect). If you want to write about a particular topic, take a few moments and think about whether it’s relevant at that time. If the answer is yes, pour out your thoughts, otherwise, write it down and save it for later (just don’t forget about it).

Finally, I suggest using SEF-friendly URLs or pretty permalinks (or whatever they are called in your respective CMS), or paying attention to your URLs if you hand code your site. Although I don’t seem to notice any effect from using this tip, I am guessing that it helps a little bit. At the very least, it makes your URLs look nice to your visitors.