LifestyleDesignUnleashed

photo credit: Jon Ovington

We all know the benefits of organic traffic but sometimes the constant merry-go-round of link building can start to get rather boring – particularly if no matter what you do your rankings don’t seem to improve.
 
But whilst we’d all like to achieve a number one ranking for our main keyword phrase, it’s still possible to receive traffic from Google purely by being on the first page of their results.
 
As an example I currently have a website which has a number two listing for a low-competition and low-traffic keyword phrase and a number ten listing for a high-competition yet high-traffic keyword phrase.
 
Surprisingly I am currently getting more traffic from the lower ranking keyword simply because more people search for this phrase and so a percentage click down to my site – even though it’s at the bottom of the page.
 
If you’re in a situation right now where you have a website (or individual web page) that is listed on page one of Google but don’t seem to be moving up to the top spot despite your best efforts then you may find the content of this article particularly useful.
 
You see, while getting a number one ranking in Google will probably have the greatest effect on your website traffic, there are other less-discussed techniques that you can use to suck more traffic from Google *without* having to move up the rankings.
 
So why not take some time to try out some of the techniques you’re about to learn before you start on your next round of link building; you might be pleasantly surprised with the results!
 
Improve Your Title
 
The title of your website has two main purposes – to attract clicks from people using the search engines and to help the search engines decide where to rank you in their results.
 
Over the last few years a surprising number of internet marketing courses have stressed the importance of placing your main keyword phrase and nothing else in the title tag.
 
So a website targeting the keyword phrase “horse riding lessons” would simply use this exact phrase in their title. Certainly there is a good chance of ranking with this technique but my own experiences suggest these website owners may be leaving money (or at least visitors) on the table.
 
Once you’ve built up a decent number of incoming links your website will have a degree of authority and so I have found that creating a longer website title not only reduces the risks of you looking like a spammer, but also increases your chances of your site ranking well for more than one keyword phrase *and* attracting more clicks from the search engine users.
 
The trick is to use one of the many keyword research tools available to find other, related, low-competition keyword phrases which you can then weave into your website title in a natural manner.
 
Keep your main keyword phrase as the first words of your title but then slot a few others in later on.
 
Using our horse riding example we might opt for a title like “Horse Riding Lessons – Learn To Ride A Horse With One Free Lesson”.
 
That title means we may well rank quite highly for the phrase “learn to ride a horse” as well as “horse riding lessons” plus offers a benefit to searchers of clicking our listing over the others on display.
 
We could even experiment with including our main keyword phrase twice to see if it boosted our results such as “Horse Riding Lessons – Learn To Ride A Horse With A Free Horse Riding Lesson”.
 
Don’t underestimate the power of this technique. I recently managed to rank one of my sites for three different keyword phrases in this way and have seen a significant increase in traffic from a total of about ten minutes work.
 
Improve Your Description
 
With so many of us using automated website building software like Joomla and WordPress these days sometimes the description shown in the search engines for our listing often isn’t as good as it could be.
 
Once again try rewriting your description (WordPress users can install the free All In One SEO plugin to help) so that it once again includes your main keyword phrase and stresses the benefits to users of clicking your listing rather than those of your competitors.
 
Link Out To Authority Sites
 
For any keyword phrase you are targeting there are likely to be authority sites that Google knows and trusts to provide excellent information. These are sites like About, Amazon, BBC and Wikipedia.
 
Whilst many website owners don’t want to risk losing PageRank or traffic by linking out to other websites, I have often seen a boost in my rankings when I included a few links to related authority sites from my homepage.
 
For example if you run a blog you can include a few in your blogroll. This, in Google’s eyes, makes you less likely to be a spammer and more likely to provide visitors with a great experience when they land on your site so they may well reward you as a result.
 
Improve Your Internal Links
 
Your internal links should include your main keyword phrase from time to time.
 
Let’s imagine that our horse riding lessons website had links on the homepage to other pages of the site. Lets say these links were “About”, “Book A Lesson”, “Find Us” and “Contact Us”.
 
All pretty basic links that probably aren’t really helping your SEO efforts.
 
However by including your main keyword phrase (and even related, secondary phrases) into these links you will help Google to understand the overall theme of your website and increase your chances of a rankings boost.
 
So as a test we might consider changing these links so that they still point to the same pages on our website and still have the same purpose but the actual text of our links is changed to include keywords.
 
For example we could change our “Book A Lesson” link to instead read “Book Your Horse Riding Lesson”. We could change “Find Us” to “Find Our Riding School” and we could change “Contact Us” to “Questions About Learning To Ride A Horse”.
 
Add Star Ratings
 
Have you ever typed in a product-related search into Google and seen those websites with star ratings next to them? Try a search now as an example for “Nokia N95 review” and just look through the first few pages of the results. You’ll see a number of review websites there which have their overall star rating of the product displayed in the Google search results.
 
And you can bet your bottom dollar that these bright yellow stars are drawing the eyes of searchers and increasing the number of people who specifically click those listings – often ignoring those ranked even higher up the page.
 
That’s all well and good but how does this help you? Well the fact is that if you review any products at all on your website (and if not, you should!) then you can use the free GDStarRating plugin for WordPress (http://www.gdstarrating.com) that supports this exact feature.
 
Write your review, activate the plugin, select the star rating and all being well you should find Google picks up this rating and starts displaying it with your search engine listing. Which means plenty more traffic for you with just a few minutes work installing a plugin.
 
Create A Video
 
Yes I know video marketing is “all the rage” right now and you’re probably sick of hearing about how you should be creating video but in this section I’d like to tell you about something just a little bit different.
 
There are a number of reasons why video rocks. The first of these is that research suggests it is currently fifty times easier to get a video ranked in Google than a text web page. That means easier rankings.
 
Secondly there is also some evidence to suggest that Google rewards “sticky” websites. If a visitor clicks a link in the search engine results and immediately clicks the back button this may count against you, harming your rankings. In contrast, the longer someone stays on your site, the better it is likely to be for your rankings and frankly the more likely they are to subscribe to your RSS feed, join your mailing list, click an Adsense ad or whatever.
 
So having a video for visitors to watch can make it more sticky for you.
 
There’s also one final point in video’s favour and that is that Google displays videos together with text web page results now. Which means you can now have two listings for a keyword phrase quite easily – one for your website and one for your video.
 
Here’s what I’ve been having a lot of success with recently…
 
Create a video that targets the keyword phrase you’re trying to rank for. Try to make it different but complementary to your website.
 
Then upload it to YouTube and give it a name and description that include your primary keyword phrase.
 
Next use the “embed” code to actually add it to your website and finally spend a little while building a few links to your video on YouTube.
 
The combination of easy rankings, a few links pointing to your video and the fact the video is displayed on your carefully targeted website means you now have an excellent chance of getting both those listings – text and video – on the first page of Google – and seeing a marked increase in traffic thanks to your two listings.
 
Create A Second Optimized Page
 
Have you ever seen an “indented” listing in Google? A listing where both the main homepage of a website *and* an internal page of the site *both* rank well for a certain keyword phrase? So well in fact that Google lists them both on the same page, for the same keyword phrase. And once again owning more than one listing in Google means more traffic for you.
 
In this way we might write an article on “horse riding lessons” explaining what to expect, how long it takes to become confident, the general costs, equipment you’ll need and so on and then publish this on our website. Link to it from your homepage and ideally build a few extra links to the article from other sites and you’ll stand the best possible chance of getting an indented listing.
 
Of course if you combine the indented listing concept with the video concept, you may find that you end up owning three whole listings on the front page of Google for your keyword phrase and I’m sure you can imagine the effect this can have on your traffic.
 
Submit Your Site To StumbleUpon
 
StumbleUpon (SU) is probably my personal favorite of all the social bookmarking sites. It’s easy and fun to use and really does help you find some top sites.
 
But you can also use it yourself by signing up for an account and submitting your own site.
This has a number of benefits. Firstly you can receive traffic directly from StumbleUpon if your listing becomes popular.
 
But just as importantly, anyone using the StumbleUpon toolbar when searching in Google will see a small StumbleUpon logo next to your listing if it is included in their listings and even a yellow star if anyone has left a review about your site on SU.
 
And like the star ratings mentioned earlier on, these extra logos help to draw the eye of surfers and increase the number of people who click through to your website.
 
So there you have it. Eight simple ways to increase your traffic from Google without spending weeks building links. And every one of them squeaky-clean and 100% white-hat.
 
Why not take a short break from all that link building this week and instead implement a few of these simple, enjoyable strategies that have the potential to significantly increase your Google traffic?

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