Well today is day 13 of the new Women in Ecommerce website. And I am so excited because we have been doing great in the search engines. In fact, every two or three days I have been checking our Alexa Rankings to see what kind of traffic we are generating.
Today our traffic rank is:
|
Alexa Traffic Rank
|
Traffic Rank in US
|
241,313That may not seem like much but on June 27th our rankings were:
|
Alexa Traffic Rank |
Traffic Rank in US |
That means that in less than 2 weeks our rankings have improved Globally by more than 600K and in the US by more than 750K! I shared this with our members and new members over the past few days so they can get excited about being a member of one of the best virtual organizations for women who do business on the web. I want them to understand it is important to us to make Women in Ecommerce a site they can be proud of being a member of and to show them that they made the right decision by joining.
This is also a very good business philosphy. If you want to know if your efforts are working and that you are meeting the needs of your intended audience, you have to be able to “track your progress.” While Alexa rankings are not the only thing you need to pay attention to (you should be using your site analytics or use a source such as Google Analytics) get a quick picture of your traffic, demographics, number of sites linking in, etc. Especially if you sell something online. You want your audience to be able to FIND your site. Here are a few easy to implement tips you can do yourself to optimize your website for search engines… (if you don’t know how, make sure the person who is optimizing your webite is doing this for you.
#1 Your Content is good content. That means NO SPAM. I can’t tell you how many sites I go to that don’t make any sense at all, they don’t have a logical flow, nor do they have a distinct niche or target audience. All they are interested in is putting garbage copy on their sites in the hopes the search engines will find them and index them for better rankings. I think the search engines are getting wise and know what SPAM looks like now.
#2 The same is true for duplicate content. Search engines frown on duplicate content so if you have several similar pages just make sure you rewrite the content so it is different on each page. It is okay to repurpose content as long as you change the title and rewrite the content as much as possible. My rule of thumb is 20-25% new content and rewriting the old.
#3 Develop a linking strategy to get quality websites to encourage links to your site and vice-versa. A quality site is one with good content, good rankings, and is relevant to your audience in some way. Link exchanges use to be very popular but they are really a waste of time today. And besides why would you recommend someone on your site that you would NEVER do business with unless they meet your quality criteria. Guestbooks are also a waste of time in my opinion. Who reads them anymore? If you are really adamant about leaving a link trail start with testimonials. Leave testimonials on sites that you have used their products and services and encourage them to reciprocate. Think LinkedIn. They have a great system for getting and giving referrals and testimonials that almost always gets the link.
#4 Use your keywords in your copy. If you have determined there are 3 main keywords that people use to search for your products and services, use them judiciously throughout your site. And by the way, different pages will require differnet keywords. This is where the analytics and Alexa reports are important as they will show you what terms people used to find your site. One rule of thumb is 3 keywords used 3 times, but not everyone agrees. You have to use them so they make sense in the copy and to your audience. And Google is always changing the rules so one day 3 times 3 may be good and the next day you get penalized. That is why it is important to hire a good SEO person who knows the rules and applies them to your situation.
#5 Check your title tags and descriptions of your pages. You can do this by right clicking on any page and a box will come up with several choices. Choose View Source or View Page Source. You can see what your webmaster has written for you (hopefully based upon what you gave her or him to use). Then you can do the same on any other website (such as the competition) to see what they too are using. This information can be used to improve your own title tag, description and keyword use. I have written and re-written these key areas several times over the past few years. Because they change. Our audience looks for different things.
Our job is to give it to them.
Note: I downloaded the Alexa toolbar to see Women in Ecommerce rankings and also check rankings of every site I visit anytime without having to go to their website.
Stay tuned for 5 More Tips to Improve your Website for the Search Engines…
For more great tips on Internet Marketing, please check out the Women’s Internet Marketing Audio Program . Even though we recorded that almost 2 years ago, most of the information is still very relevant today. And its on sale for only $37 (regular price was $67). That’s 11 expert interviews, a workbook and several other great resources for only $37. And we have a 100% money-back satisfaction guarantee so you have nothing to loose. Check it out today!
