In Today's Issue
Search Engine Marketing
---> SEO Trends
High Rankings Happenings
---> SEO Consulting Prices Slashed!
---> High Rankings SEO Site Review
Twitter Question of the Week
---> The easiest part of SEO is...
Advanced SEO Forum Thread of the Week
---> Rankings Are Dead?
Advisor Wrap-up
---> Miss me? Introduction
Hey everyone!
Recently I mentioned to some that I could spend 24/7 just poring through Google Analytics. On my last analytics jaunt I noticed interesting trends that I wanted to share with you (25,000 of my closest friends!) in today's article.
Hope you find it as fascinating as I did! – Jill
Search Engine Marketing Issues
++SEO Trends++
Each year around this time, I like to review the traffic trends to our High Rankings website, and compare the traffic to the previous year. I usually learn a lot from this exercise, and I highly recommend it to everyone. Thankfully, with Google Analytics it's very simple.
Some of the things I look at are total number of visits to the website, as well as the number of visits to certain sections or pages of the site. And of course, I especially like to look at which keyword phrases drive search engine traffic.
Because our site is all about SEO, in addition to learning how we're doing with our own optimization and overall online marketing initiatives, I can also learn about overall trends in the industry. High Rankings has a number of authoritative articles on fundamental SEO techniques that are typically ranked #1 or #2 for the keywords that relate to them. In fact, those articles tend to have more page views than any others on the site.
Today I thought I'd share some of these insights with you. Please remember that you have to take these "trends" with a grain of salt because many factors could be at play beyond just what people are searching at Google.
With that said, here are some statistics for you, with my commentary on what they might (or might not) mean.
For this exercise I looked at just Google visitors, rather than all search engine visitors, because it was easier to filter the data that way. Our overall Google visitor number was about the same in 2008 as it was in 2009 (–0.24%), which is good for purposes of looking at the trends. If we had substantially more or fewer Google visitors, the numbers of visitors based on keywords would be skewed because of that.
Meta Keywords? Really?
I had hoped that searches related to "meta keywords" would be way down. Silly me: I assumed that certainly by now nobody still thought they were a useful part of SEO. I was unpleasantly surprised to see that they were, in fact, up (+32.04%). [Sigh] (Now, remember – it's possible our meta keyword article wasn't ranking as highly the entire year in 2008, which could also account for the difference, although I'm pretty sure it was.) Even worse was that people were still searching for information on whether they should use commas or not in their keyword tag! (+95.83%) [Even Bigger Sigh!]
Surely They Know Title Tags Are Key?
I had also hoped to see title tag keywords up significantly, and they were, but only (+19.84%). It never ceases to amaze me that our title tag article typically receives only a third of the page views as the meta keyword article. It appears that a whole lot more education on that is still needed.
They Love Their Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions continue to be hugely popular, though. In fact, our meta description article is the single most viewed page on the website. Description keywords from Google were up (+34.94%). This is interesting because, while meta descriptions are somewhat useful for SEO, they're not as important as some make them out to be. Assuming you have great keyword-rich content already on your pages, they're often not necessary. So even with this one, it's a shame that it has so many more page views than the title tag article.
Good Riddance, Keyword Density!
There was good news on the keyword density front as searches with the word "density" in them were down (–32.91%). Yay! My hope is that this means people are finally getting away from seeking out that secret-super-duper-all-encompassing keyword density formula or percentage that will magically put all their pages in the #1 spot.
SEO Training's In – Site Audit's Out
It also looks as if more people are seeking out ways to be trained in SEO, as our training keywords were up (+62.40%) and our classes keywords up (+121.35%). More people may be looking to learn how to do SEO themselves as opposed to having website audits done by other companies because audit-type keywords were down (–31.01%).
Google Really Does Love You!
People are increasingly looking for answers to frequently asked SEO questions as our FAQ keywords were up (62.69%). And even better is the fact that fewer people are wondering "why Google hates them" as page views of that page were down (–7.79%). From what I've seen via forum questions, this is corroborated because there do seem to be fewer people complaining about being penalized for no reason at all than in previous years. This was especially common when Google had their aging delay for new domains in full force.
And Speaking of Forums...
It seems that forums may be going the way of the dinosaur. Our forum page views in general were down (–32.26%). I think this can be attributed to the fact that newer people online are just not as familiar or comfortable with forums as they are with other forms of social media. That said, people searching using SEO forum keywords were in fact up (+16.71%). Perhaps it will be a few more years before we have to put the ole High Rankings Forum out to pasture after all!
Can We Get a Little Closer?
More companies interested in outsourcing their SEO are seeking out local SEO companies. We've definitely noticed this with clients and potential clients this year. And searches that contain the word Boston were up (+80.10%) over last year, which seems to corroborate this.
How about you? Have you noticed any trends in your analytics as they relate to the search marketing industry?
Jill
Share your comments and thoughts here.
P.S. If anyone would like to republish the above article, please email me your request and where it will reside, and I'll send you a short bio you can use with it for your site.
Twitter Question of the Week ++The easiest part of SEO is...++
I previously asked what people thought the hardest part of SEO was so I thought it would be appropriate to find out what people think the easiest part of SEO is!
Here's what my followers had to say...
martinbowling: The easiest part of SEO is on page optimization.
barrywise: Onpage optimization :)
idea15webdesign: I would say SEO *is* easy, it's all the sales hype, BS, and scammers that make it look difficult.
Jill: Good answer!
KevinMSpence: Easiest part: creating a strategy. Hardest part: implementing it.
Jill: Ohhh another good one!
leebrinckley: First thing to come to mind is writing SEO-friendly XHTML code.
domjbs: Easiest thing about SEO is being able to rely on hard #s from analytics.
robwatts: Easiest thing? How 'bout not using meta kw tags :)
Jill: Yeah!
And for me, I guess I'd have to say that the easiest thing would be editing existing, well-written content to be more descriptive and make better use of keyword phrases.
Want to participate in the Twitter Question of the Week?
Follow @jillwhalen on Twitter
Share your comments and thoughts here.
Advanced Forum Thread of the Week ++Rankings Are Dead?++
Frequent forum participant 1DMF recently read my article "5 Reasons Why Rankings Are a Poor Measure of Success" and thought it would be interesting to have a discussion on it.
Read it and share your thoughts on this topic here:
Rankings Are Dead?
Advisor Wrap-up
That's all for today!
Did you miss me last week? It was technically a newsletter week, but with our American Thanksgiving happening on Thursday, it seemed that most readers would be preparing for that and might end up missing the newsletter. Well, that and I was swamped too! In fact, I nearly gave up on doing this one because I'm still swamped. Pauline has been on vacation so I get to do both my regular work AND hers. Lucky me... The good news (for her) is that whenever she goes away, she comes back mighty appreciated by me.
Needless to say, I'm looking forward to next week!
And I'll catch you in two... – Jill
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