Checking Your Organic Keyword Ranking Data Just Got Easier!

Have you ever wondered how many times your listing appears in Google's organic search engine results? Want to know how effective your listing really is? How many times someone clicks on your listings and in which position your link gets clicked on?

Well, the wait is over! You can now see which keywords are performing the best and in which positions on Google!

It's one thing to be listed on the first page of Google but it's a whole different ball park when your listing is actually being clicked on by potential customers.

Up until now there hasn't really been any really good tools to tell you exactly where your site is listed and how many times someone has actually clicked on your listing to get to your site.

There are some techniques and some tricks of the trade that let you know these things but nothing that most website owners/ webmasters would know.

Guess what,

No you no longer have to wonder if your listings are actually being clicked on.

Google webmaster tools now tells you what keywords your site is being listed for in their search results and in addition to letting you know which keywords they also tell you how many times your site shows up in their search results plus how many times your listing is actually being CLICKED ON!

How cool is that!

You can also know which positions your listings were in and how many times your listing was clicked on in that position plus so much more!

You may be shocked to see that being #1 doesn't always mean your listing will be clicked on. You may see that your listing in the 4th or 6th position is doing better than your listing in the 1st position.

This to me is excellent news as far as SEO is concerned. This will give you the opportunity to see what's actually working for you.

This new data will let you know if you need to spruce up your on page content / meta tags or change around some wordings if you find that a keyword is getting a lot of impressions but the CTR (click through rate) is at a very low rate.

This tool is also great for seeing how your branding is working. You can check and see how many times someone actually types in your business brand opposed to typing in your actual keywords. If you see that your brand name is showing a lot of impressions and click throughs, that is a clear indication that there is some buzz going on about your business and you are moving in the right direction.

Over the years I have had the opportunity to work with a lot of webmasters to help improve their keyword ranking in Google , Yahoo and Bing and increase their website traffic and conversion rate. Our packages have always included Google Webmaster Tools set up but I urge webmasters to sign up for an account more than ever now.

I have been granted permission from one of my long term seo clients (Fleur Lilly) to use their data to show you how the new feature in Google's webmaster tools can help you with optimizing your site or improving your visibility in Google's search engine result pages (SERPS).

Below is the data for one of 358 Fleurlilly.com top search engine queries or targeted keywords. We targeted this keyword phrase for them in the beginning of March 2010. From the data (March 18,2010 to April 18,2010) , we can see that our optimization for this keyword phrase is on the right track. This keyword has generated a lot of traffic to their site and they have seen a tremendous increase in conversions for this brand, so much that they told us that they had sold out of many of their styles and have had to order close to 200 new pairs!

In the images below, you will see the number of times their site shows up in Google's search engine result pages (Impressions), the number of times potential customers clicked on their listing (Click Through Rate) and the percentage between the two.

This image shows their top search query, how many times their site showed up and the number of traffic they got for just this keyword phrase for the past 30 days:

This next image shows a break down of the keyword phrase, which you can see by clicking on the + sign right next to your keyword. The data shows the position their site / listing showed up in their SERPS. It also shows how many times their listing showed and the number of times her listing / link was clicked on.


If you pay close attention you will see that her site performed better in the 3, 4, and 5th position. Guess what!? Their site did okay on the 2nd page too! Their site showed up 1000 times and was clicked on 46 times. Not to bad for 2nd page listing. The site has showed up on the third page too but no clicks. So from their data their site performs great on the first page and still has traffic from the second page but being listed on other pages is not something that is too beneficial.

This image data shows something that is very interesting. This image shows which pages are getting the most click throughs and impressions. What was interesting about this data is that their product pages are getting the most traffic. This goes back to my comments about not abandoning your product pages. It's great to focus on your categories and main categories but definitely more beneficial when you focus on the actual product landing page. So don't neglect your product pages. Make sure you optimize the meta tags and your on page content.

Using your data in your webmaster tools can help you improve your website by letting you know which keywords you are ranking for, and how many times your site is being clicked on. If you see that you have keywords that have a high impression amount but a low CTR and more importantly no sales. Then go back to the drawing board and change things around a bit to increase your CTR. I'll do another post to give you tips on increasing your CTR. If you have a low percentage in click throughs but your conversion is high, you can still be on the right track and just may need some minor updates.

You can also use this data to increase your branding.

If you are not getting any traffic with your business name as a keyword, this lets you know what you need to improve on as far as branding.

If branding is part of your business strategy then you will have to start focusing on building your brand through social media avenues, building business relationships with others in your industry and getting your name out there by participating in events or even partnering up with blogs.

This new feature in your Google Webmaster tools gives you so much insight and data that you definitely want to look into if your organic listings are important to you and your business online success in Google's search engine result pages.

Now is the time to get focused and make a decision about how serious you want to be about moving in a positive direction with your search engine optimization and website traffic needs.

The tools are available to you, it's up to you to take advantage of them.

If your not sure what all the data is or how to improve your organic search engine listings. Consult with an SEO specialist.

Special Thanks to FleurLilly.com for allowing me to use their data!

Got any questions or comments about what you have done to improve your keyword ranking and CTR, leave us a comment, I'd love to hear from you!

Carla Phillips

My SEO Gal
http://myseogal.com
Got a Question or need help?
Contact My SEO Gal Today for a FREE SEO Quote.

Tips On How Blogging Improves Your Ranking

Did you know that blogging can improve your search engine rankings for your targeted keywords?

Blogging is an important factor when you are trying to rank for your targeted keywords.

The search engines love new content and I know you have heard that content is "king". The more new content you add to your site or blog the more the search engines will reward you.

If you just add one or two post to your blog each week and be consistent with the amount of blog post you do per week the search engines, Google especially will love you for it.

Blog posting doesn't have to be complicated either. I always get emails from website owners asking what to blog about and how uncreative they are and how they are not good writers.

To be honest you don't have to be an experienced writer when it comes to blog posting. It's okay to be natural and your self and your posts don't have to be long and detailed.

Here are some things you can blog about:

1. Reviews: Products that you have used and like or dislike that are related to the type of products or services you offer.

2. New products recently added to your site.

3. A product that you really want to increase exposure for you.

4. Small how to guides

5. Coupon codes that you have found online and want to share with your readers

6. Sales going on at your site or contest

7. Post a list of things that you love on your site. Doesn't have to be things offered by you. If you link to other's websites,they may see the link in their traffic stats and do the same for you.

8. Recipes

9. Interviews with others in your niche

10. If you get comments on your blog that may be questions from one of your readers, you can take those questions and create blog post about them. 


There are so many little things you can blog about to increase your exposure online and get the search engines to pay more attention to you.

Here are some SEO tips that you can use to help increase ranking for keywords you want to target:

1. When blogging about a product or service that is being offered on your site, make sure to have your keyword in your blog post title, in the first 25 words of your blog post and in your blog post labels.

2. Link your keyword to the correct landing page on your site. So if your blog post is about your fabulous tutus for girls. Make sure that you take the keyword phrase tutus for girls and link it to your page that is about your tutus for girls. Keep in mind not to just link all of your keywords to your home page. So a little love to your inner pages, categories, sub categories and product pages.

3. Add a list of your categories to your side navigation bar and link them to your categories on your website. This will help with keyword ranking as well.

If you find a really good keyword that you want to rank for, create a blog post using that keyword phrase in the title and link to a website page on your site and overtime you will see that your blog post are being indexed within  hours and start showing up on the first page of the search engine results over time.

Carla Phillips

My SEO Gal
http://myseogal.com
Got a Question or need help?
Contact My SEO Gal Today for a FREE SEO Quote.

Are you ready to go Universal?

Did I get your attention? Well I hope I did because if you don't know what universal search is then you might be left in 2008 as far as search engine page rank is concerned.

I came across a great informational article and here's what I got from it about Universal Search. It's long but worth the read.

What exactly is Universal Search and What does it have to do with you.

This blog topic will explain what Universal Search is and ways you can benefit from implementing these tactics into your SEO plans for 2009.

There are some sites that are already using these tactics and they will benefit from them and their are tons of website who don't even know about these changes and these new tactics will ultimately end up working against you.

Universal Search in a nutshell is the combination of all Google's search engine databases into one index that will serve a single set of search engine result pages.

Examples of some of these databases are: Google Images, Google News, Google Blogger and Google Video.

So when you go to Google and do a search for whatever you are searching for that day. You usually get a list of links that may be relevant to your search. Well instead of just getting those links, what you will get is a list of everything combined together; Blogs, Images, News, and Videos.

Pretty Cool Huh!?

Maybe Not....

So right know we all know that you would have to search each of those databases in order to get the information you are looking for. What Google is planning to do is to integrate everything into one BIG search engine.

On one hand as a searcher what this means is easier access to everything you would look for in Google News, Images and Videos would be available in one search. On the other hand as a business owner looking to get more targeted traffic, this could either be a good thing or a bad thing.

This seams like a cool idea as long as it doesn't get too complicated. As long as their layout is not too confusing then I think this is a really great idea.

So I guess you are wondering what this has to do with your online business?

Well these changes can work against you if you don't take action now and start getting your site optimized and keep up with the jones so to speak.

What should you do to make sure you aren't left in 2008:

• Organic Results : If you site isn't already optimized for organic or natural search engine results (listings that you do not have to pay for by Pay Per Click ads), this would be the place to start. Without this type of SEO you have no chance of competing in the search engines with or without Universal Search.
  

• Since Universal Search will be taking information from databases like press releases, blogs, images, etc.. It would be wise to start using one of these resources to get exposure for your site.

• Google Image Search: It's a great idea to have images on your site that convey a message, sale or promote a product. Now Google has it to where customers can find your site via a Google Image Search. Make sure you optimize your images with descriptive, keyword-rich file names and use ALT tags in each image. This will be useful to those who can only search text formats.

• Google Video: Use good, keyword file names for your video files. Create a good keyword title tag, description tag, and video site map.
  
  
• Google News: Submit your press releases for display as news. You can also make a new content page on your site and display your press release on your site as well.

• Google Blog Search : Use Social Media sites and Blog Submission sites to drive traffic to your website. Make sure to submit your blog to Google Blog search and your blog can help you with Universal Search as well.
  

So when someone does a search for a product or service that you have to offer using the Universal Search Results and your website comes up. Within the same search your competitors site comes up under videos, images, news and blogs. That searcher is more likely to click on your competitors site since they have more results that come up for the keyword phrase being searched for instead of your site.

Without knowing exactly how Google will layout the results. Just know that you will be competing for the top listing. The top position could be videos, blogs, images, or news and if you are missing one of those listings then you will miss out on a potential customer.

So in summary you want to make sure you optimize your site to have most if not all of databases listed above.

Make sure you don't wait until it's too late to start optimizing your site! If you don't do it, your competition will. :)