“I’m not getting enough web traffic to my blog! Help! Help!”

Is this you? You work your tail off building your blog, you make it real pretty, real interesting. You do some SEO stuff. Maybe it’s an adsense blog, and … you see hardly any clicks! Darn!

This would be easiest to solve if you knew the point where it’s breaking down.

For example, you know the beginning (you create a blog with some traffic-generation stuff), and you know the end (very few visitors clicking on adsense), but it’s unclear which parts of what you’re already doing are working, and which are not. That is, there are many unknown facts in between the beginning and the end.

For example –

* How many of your keyword pages are indexed in Google?

* And where are they appearing on google when you do a search on your keywords? Page one? Page 87? Page 743?

* Let’s say you have adsense on the pages. Are the adverts appearing on the adsense reflecting what you think the page is about? In other words, does Google think the page is about the same thing that you think the page is about? (If not clear about this, see our article on how to use adsense to tune up your page seo.)

* Now, if google knows what your page is about, and if google is responding to your keywords and serving you up, then do the keywords you’re targetting get many searches? How many?

* And when Google serves up your page to visitors, what is the title they read? What is the description they read? Is the title written so that the visitor says ‘Aha! Yes, that’s what I was looking for!’ And does the description *sell* the visitor of going to see your site?

We see lots of mention in forums about different ways to generate web traffic, to do search engine optimization on your wordpress blog, about how to get more visitors to your website, about using articles and backlinks and social networks. But if’ it’s not working, where does it break?

We see lots of mention in forums about checklists and about step-by-step instructions. And that’s swell when you’re thinking about what you need to do.

BENCHMARKS

However, in these site-optimization and web-traffic forums, it’s rare to see anyone discuss the concept of benchmarks in the sales process.

Wikipedia claims that the word benchmark came from marks on surveying equipment. However, we suspect that originally it was simply a mark on a work bench. For example, if you were making shoes, you might have marks on your bench that show you how long to cut a piece of leather.

A benchmark for a marketing process is finding the points from the customer’s starting place along the customer’s path to the customer’s final resting place- Oops. I mean, to the customer’s final action in buying your product.

And these points are only useful when they can be measured.

You can probably refine this quick list, but the benchmarks in getting a customer to your blog and clicking on an adsense ad would be something like this –

SAMPLE BLOG-TRAFFIC BENCHMARKS

* How many keywords are you targetting
* How many searches does each of these get per month
(But that will only be useful if competition and your skill can prevail)
* How many keyword pages indexed?
* What position on Google do your keyword-pages appear
* What title and description do your customers see?
* How many customers are clicking that title/description
* How many customers are arriving at your site
* How many are staying (versus leaving immediately)
* How many adsense adverts appear
* How many appearing adsense adverts are relevant to your keyword
* Which adsense box positions work the best?
* How many clients click on the adsense adverts?

BREAK IT DOWN TO SIMPLE, MEASUREABLE BLOCKS

If you break it down like a journey that must happen in sequence — keywords volume, google serving, titles appearing, customers choosing, customers visiting, customers staying, adsense boxes positions, adsense ads content, customers clicking adsense — then you can see which parts are working. Leave those alone.

And the parts that aren’t working? Change them. Fix it.

If you’ll make a set of benchmarks (that you can measure) along the (customer’s) path, you can see the points where it’s stuck. If you can see clearly where it’s broken, you can make it work.

As most folks know, one of the things search engines examine is your Page Title, and also the filename of the page (like white-tennis-shoes.html for example), to help them figure out what your page is about, so that they can serve it up to somebody looking for just that thing.

Because of the convenience of working with blog software, these days lots of people use it to build their sites. Because of its popularity, I’ll use Wordpress blog software in this example.

When you’re creating a ‘page’ in Wordpress, you get to choose your title, and that’s swell. And on that page-editing panel, you can also tweak the name of the ‘page’. That is your title might be ‘How to get the Most Comfortable White Tennis Shoes’, and you might tweak the page name to be ‘white-tennis-shoes’ on that same panel.

But when you create a ‘post’ (or article), in a default Wordpress install, you have no option to tweak the ‘page name’. And in fact, the default page name will look something like this –

http://yourgreatdomain.com/?p=1234

However, it’s easy to fix, so that the url and page name becomes –

http://yourgreatdomain.com/white-tennis-shoes/

Here’s how –

(Step 1) THE HTACCESS FILE –

You’ll need shell access, and see if you have an .htaccess file in the html root (usually the ‘public_html’ folder).

If you don’t have one, type ‘touch .htaccess’ and it will create one.

Then type ‘chmod 777 .htaccess’. (Don’t copy my quote marks.) This makes the .htaccess file writeable. I’ve heard that on some systems you can type chmod 755 .htaccess, but that doesn’t work on my system.

Wordpress will need a writable .htaccess file to do some trickery in order to make the filenames as you are describing them.

(Step 2) PERMALINKS –

This is the word used by Wordpress to describe page titles in the format you want. The ‘permanent link’ at the end of your URL can be of the format ?p=255, or it could be of the format ‘2008/07/26/samplepost’, or several other formats.

To change Wordpress from the default format (?p=123), go to the Wordpress admin page, and on the right, click settings. Then on the resulting menu, click ‘Permalinks’.

You’ll see several choices. None *exactly* match what you want, but you can get it in two steps.

(a) Click on ‘Month and Name’. Notice that the last item ‘Custom Structure’ just suddenly changed and now it says /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/.

(b) Now click on the last item ‘Custom Structure’, and erase the stuff at the beginning, leaving only /%postname%/

When you click the Update button, Wordpress will write some magical gobblygook into the .htaccess file, and what’s reallyl happening is that, internally, it’s still ?p=123, but now some translation is going on, and to the outside world (including you) it looks different.

AND NOW, LIFE IS WONDERFUL

Because now, the url and page name of your page will have become –

http://yourgreatdomain.com/white-tennis-shoes/

And that is a wonderful thing.

Big bad ‘Blogroll.’ You’ve seen this showing up on a default wordpress installation. Even after you pick a nice theme, there it is: Blogroll.

Doesn’t it sound like some kind of deli sandwich with a horrid meat called ‘Blogony?’

In many cases, looking so bloggish with a Blogroll doesn’t further your goals.

But fixing this up, to change a weakness to a strength … That’s easy. Here’s how …

HOW TO GET RID OF THE BLOGROLL ITEM ON A WORDPRESS THEME

Simple.

First, hopefully you’re using a Wordpage theme that is ‘widget ready.’ If not, consider getting another theme, because widget-ready themes are much faster to work with, and they often eliminate the need to edit the theme in the theme editor, which can get your hands all dirty with htmls and phps and css stuff.

So, assuming that your theme is widget-ready, then in the wordpress admin page, under Design | Widgets, add a widget or two.

What widgets? Well, we like text widgets. Or rather, we *love* text widgets!

Here are some of the things you can do with text widgets …

ADSENSE CODE

Use a text Widget in the sidebar with adsense code pasted in. It might make you some adsense revenue. But this sometimes contributes to the look you want to have; and sometimes not.

I’d say it *contributes* to the desired appearance on this musical instrument comparison site for people who are thinking to Buy a Chapman Stick (or perhaps the alternative instrument).

I’d say it *would not* contribute to the desired appearance on this musical instrument presentation site about a specialty instrument used for the Two-Handed Tapping Music Technique.

POSITIONING STATEMENT

Another use for the text Widget in the sidebar is to paste in ‘positioning statement.’

Examples:

(1) from an Internet Marketing website — “About Voltos Industries: Voltos Industries manufactures a unique musical instrument called the Mobius Megatar, a type of electric guitar which is played by merely touching the strings to the frets, making two-handed touchstyle play possible …”

or

(2) from a Play Guitar with Two-Handed Tapping Technique website — “World Home of Two-Handed Tapping: All styles of tapping — guitar tapping, tapping on bass, Chapman Stick techniques, and the Easy Touch-Style Method. This site is for all.”

And does this give you a quick and easy way to wander through your keywords? You bet!

The humans see something that looks *unlike* many commercial sites, and the information also orients the humans. Up near the top of the site, the positioning statement tells what the site is about.

And the web search engines see keyworded text that helps them know what your page is about, and therefore when to serve it up to searchers.

Helps the humans. Furthers your goals. Helps the Search Engines. The search engines help you. All good.

PUT ‘BLOGROLL’ TO WORK TO BECOME USEFUL

A blogroll of course is a (a) stupid-sounding name for a set of (b) links that are worthless for your purposes.
Both those things can be changed.

(a) In wordpress admin panel, go to Manage | Link Categories and there you will see a category of links called ‘Blogroll’. Click on it and change it to say “Other wondrous Sites” or words that would be good for you.

(b) In wordpress admin panel, go to Manage | Links. Wipe out the default links, and put links in to some of your other sites (for google juice toward those sites) or to some biggie important sites whose rep won’t change relative to you because they got a couple more links. This makes you look honest and fair, to Google. And Google is your friend.

Here’s an example from a How to Get a Girlfriend website — You’ll see the positioning at top of column, then further down, you’ll find a set of links and descriptions. This is the ‘Blogroll’, transformed into something useful. (This particular theme organizes the links by category; but many themes don’t.)

Now, note that this same or similar goal can be accomplished by wiping out the ‘blogroll’ appearing in the sidebar by putting some widgets into the sidebar, and then sticking this same content into a text widget. Using the text widget may be quicker or easier. (But depending on the theme, re-purposing the existing blogroll mechanism may provide you with quick and easy slick formatting, as on our example above.)

TEXT NAVIGATION WITH ANCHOR TEXT

Consider using a text widget in the sidebar for Text Navigation.

Usually this would go near the bottom of the sidebar rather than at the top, because frankly it’s for the search engines. Here’s why text navigation is a good idea, used correctly …

Wordpress blogs often require you to use very short word for the nav buttons. And a single short word is not very good, considered as anchor text.

When Google reads your site, wouldn’t you rather have Google know that such-a-page is about ‘low-cost flamdoodle model 3-B’ instead of having Google think that such-a-page is about ‘product’?

Frankly, Google needs all the help it can get. It’s going to go with the preponderance of words that it sees. That’s why keyword gurus are always talking about keyword density. Got to be a certain amount to rise above the ‘noise’ of the other words, so Google can ‘hear’ the keyword loud and clear.

One goood way you can clearly tell Google what each page is about is to tell Google in a way that Google is already programmed to use — the anchor text in links.

Google doesn’t *only* look at the anchor text in backlinks coming to your site from Slovenia. Google also looks at the anchor text of the links *on your own site* that point to the other pages on your site.

And good news! *You* have total control over the anchor text of pagelinks on your own site, if you’ll take time to (a) select a text widget, (b) put it near the bottom of the sidebar, (c) Title it ‘Text Navigation’, and (d) make links to all of your pages, using SEO-chosen anchor text in each link.

It’s cheap, it’s quick, it’s useful.

Here’s an example of Text Navigation used this way used on an Electronic Guitar Tuner website.

Google is your friend.

The wordpress text widget is your friend.

More traffic is your friend.

All friends here!

The following is an advertisement for a software product called Keyword Analyzer. The reason we’re posting this advertisement here is that this program is really, really good. We bought it. And when you see how nicely it does, quite likely you will want to get it as well.

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And to really run really, really fast like in their videos you need a monthly subscription to some kind of keywords database. And if you’ve shopped around, you may have been startled by the monthly cost of some of these database subscriptions. For example, WordTracker, or Wordze, and Keywords Discovery.

However, in this case, it’s not that bad, because the same company making this software, BlueInfinity, as of two months ago, as I write this, actually came out with a monthly keywords subscription that’s only $14, called Webwords. Yes, still, it’s a monthly subscription. But, no, it’s not a whole lot of money, and it will give you huge power and run way faster than more expensive solutions, such as Keywords Elite.

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(We recommend that you do; you’ll be glad you learned about it.)

“AdSense,” a made-up proper noun: describes a service offered by Google. You paste some JavaScript on your page, and it queries Google. Their back-end web servers find paying-advertisement customers (their program called “AdWords”) and pass some of these for display on your page. If a visitor clicks, the advertiser pays Google, and Google pays you.

“Monetize,” a made-up verb: a trendy way to say “make money from.” Specifically to modify a webpage in such a way that it brings money to you.

The key that is useful to you is that Google must analyse the keywords and search terms on your page in order to do this. Motivated by money, Google *will* analyse your page. And this is where you can use Google to your advantage.

GETTING GOOGLE TO TUNE THE SEARCH ENGINE RESPONSE TO YOUR WEBPAGE

Probably you see where this is going.

Whether or not you intend to use AdSense to Monetize, do this –

1. Sign up for Google AdSense. (Go to adsense.google.com, and follow the yellow brick road.)
2. There, create an AdSense advertisement. You get to choose colors and shape. (You can tweak later.) If you’re going to use it only temporarily for page tuning, it doesn’t matter much, except that you may have to choose the shape according to where you’re going to (temporarily) place it on your web page.
3. Place the JavaScript they provide onto your online business webpage.
4. After about ten minutes, you will begin to see the Google paid-link ads appear on your page.

Now, look at what they are offering, and ask yourself these questions –

“Do these ads offer a product or service similar to what I’m offering?”

“Would these ads be interesting to my target customer?”

If they do, that’s swell.

If they don’t, then tweak your page. Tweak the page title, the page description, the headline, and the text. Do this until the Google ads start to represent the kind of thing that you’re providing and until the Google ads start to appeal to the kind of person you are targeting.

“Targeting,” a made-up infinitive verb: To shoot down like a dog- Oops! I meant to say, to select with exactness and finesse the customer or consumer to whom you desire to sell your online product or service.

Once you’re happy with what Google is telling you about your page, and the baring of the Google soul about what Google believes your page is about, then if you don’t wish to display those folks ads, take it out, or hide it.

WATCH THIS SPECIFIC EXAMPLE

We published an article on the Simply Free Article Spinner site, and that article was originally called ‘Location Location Location.’ And when we first published the article, with AdSense running on the same page, here’s what AdSense displayed …

Damn! Google thinks the page is about vehicles!

Well, gee, whillikers. We didn’t really want google filing the page under stuff you drive! We wanted them to file it under SEO, and online business, and how to make money online, and search engine optimization.

So why didn’t they?

We examine the text of the article, and we find this short paragraph –

If you’re looking for a ‘used automobile,’ there’s a site called ‘automobiles.com.’ They have a nice location as well. Right on Google’s front page. That’s a good location.

We just meant this as an illustration for the reader, but Google was simple-minded. Other phrases on the page included ‘on the street,’ ‘going somewhere,’ and ‘location.’ Nothing contradicted Google’s wrong idea.

HOW TO FIX IT

First we took out that example, and we put in this revised example –

If you’re looking for an ’seo book,’ there’s a site called ’seobook.com.’ They have a nice location as well. Right on Google’s front page. That’s a good location.

This works just as well as an example for the reader, but now we won’t be giving Google the wrong idea!

Seeing that our good friend, Google, could use a bit more information, we provided Google with additional hints –

1. We changed the page name from “location-location-location” to “seo-location-location-location”
2. We changed the article headline from “Location, Location, Location” to “SEO your Website — Location, Location, Location”.
3. Our page had no Title nor Description. Oops! So we added the title “SEO your Website — Get a good Location, Location, Location.”
4. And we added a description (for the searcher to read) that says, “The location-location-location rule for online business. What’s a good location? Google knows.”
5. We flagged the article with these categories: google, online marketing, search engine, seo
6. We added the following tags: article spinner, google, location, search engine, seo, websites

And when we were done, we went and drank a cup of coffee, then came back and refreshed the page. And here’s what AdSense now tells us –

Ah! Now Google knows.

Because we helped our good friend Google to know. With clues.

Does it always work? No.

Does it often work? Yes.

Google is your friend.

None of it matters squat … unless you can get visitors to your website. Unless you can get ‘traffic.’

The old slogan for a retail store is that the three things that matter the most are ‘location, location, and location.’ It’s true enough. Generally you visit the stores you can easily get to. That’s what other folks do also.

But … what is a location on the internet?

FREE TWENTY-DOLLAR BILLS

You could have a domain called ‘george-stevens-free-money.com’ where you give away twenty dollar bills. But nobody comes to your site to get a free twenty dollar bill. Why not?

Because … what is your location?

NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK

That’s right. Your location is a needle in a haystack. You are hidden among the millions of websites on the internet. You begin your operation in a state of non-existance, as far as the rest of the world is concerned. You don’t exist.

Not much of a location.

SEARCH ENGINES

To find something on a street, you can just look around. Or you can peek in the phone book.

On the internet, people use a search engine.

If the search engine (like Google) has found your site, then you may be in the search engine. But if you just put your effort into putting up your pretty website, creating your dynamite product, and offering a great bargain, then most likely you are on page 327 of the Google listings.

Do you ever read hundreds of Google pages to pick the one you like?

Nope? Well, nobody else does either. So you’re in the search engine, but where is your location?

Still … your location is a needle in a haystack.

BUT SOME WEBSITES STAND OUT!

Some websites are not a needle in a haystack.

For example, Amazon, EBay, and Google itself. And thousands of other, smaller sites.

For example, if you’re looking for ‘golf balls,’ there’s a site called ‘golfballs.com.’ They have a darned good location for anybody looking around for golf balls. Right on Google’s front page. That’s a good location.

If you’re looking for a ‘seo book,’ there’s a site called ’seobook.com.’ They have a nice location as well. Right on Google’s front page. That’s a good location.

If you’re looking for a way of playing guitar by just touching the strings to the frets, called ‘touchstyle,’ there’s a site called ‘megatar.com’ which offers touchstyle lessons and touchstyle guitars. They have a nice location. Right on Google’s front page.

ARE YOU GETTING THE PICTURE?

It’s probably obvious that one way to have a great location on the internet is to be on the front page of Google.

Well, we’ve got that solved. That’s what you can do.

But … how?

That will be covered in our next article, ‘The Article Spinner - Sweet-Talking the Search Engines.’