Five of my six hubs have keywords putting them on 1st page Google

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   brakel2posted 14 years ago

   Did I get lucky or what? The only problem is that there is not much traffic. I spent a lot of time with Adwords Keyword tool, and I bought an SEO book by Michael Miller and asked a lot of questions in the forum. Thanks for all your help. Any comments?

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      seo in a nutshellposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      check out my last hub...i think it covers things pretty well. there is no point in ranking for keywords with no traffic. do the research and your traffic will take off. i try to make hubs or blog posts that get at least 1000 visits per month.
      
      ken

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      Peter Hogganposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      brakel2, when researching keywords using the Adwords tool do you use broad, phrase or exact matching?

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         brakel2posted 14 years agoin reply to this

         I was using broad but recently changed to exact.

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   Cagsilposted 14 years ago

   Congrats!
   
   However, if you are not getting traffic to your hubs, then I would say that your topics or titles are not what most people are searching for.
   
   That is all I can take away from what you said.

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   Peter Hogganposted 14 years ago

   Excellent stuff.
   
   In a similar vein to Cagsils comment the traffic for the keywords you are ranking for just might not be that great. That’s the problem with the Adwords tool it gives no real indication as to the levels of traffic for the keyphrases you are researching.

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      Aficionadaposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I started writing a response to this, then in rereading it I think I answered my own question.  But I'll check to be sure.  (Following is my modified response.)
      
      The Adwords Tool does give information about the number of times a specific search term or phrase is being used to find a subject.  But you, Peter, are saying (I believe) that that number of searches doesn't automatically convert into the same number in terms of actual traffic to the site - correct?
      
      @ Stacie L - Does the "trending" feature of the Adwords Tool help any with the kind of prediction you might want?  Is it helpful at all, or just another set of numbers to make us dizzy and unable to write very well? 

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         brakel2posted 14 years agoin reply to this

         One of my keyword phrases is "good public speaker" which seems to get the most traffic. The google tool does drive me crazy, and I spend too much time on it. I understand the feeling about the tool. Any other website better than google tool?

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         Peter Hogganposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         The tool was designed for Adwords users, so the numbers correlate to the number of times an ad would be displayed in response to a search. Broad match will include the ad in thousands of similar terms that a page would have little chance in ranking for organically so the numbers will be artificially high. The opposite could be true for exact match i.e. a page might rank organically for a broader set of terms than an exact match ad.

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   Stacie Lposted 14 years ago

   after researching keywords , SEO techniques and other hubbers advice I've come to the conclusion that keywords are not as important as we think.
   what i mean is, keywords are only important for the time people are searching for that topic,
   what is popular this week and what shows up on Google first page may not be popular in a month from now.
   I'm tired of stressing over keyword ranking.

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   Pearldiverposted 14 years ago

   I Just Use the Grey Matter Tool...
   If I Google My Writing Name..
   then of 6,ooo,ooo I am positioned at #25 (third page) and the bulk of all my works are listed under Pearldiver.
   I have been promoting the name for a year.
   I have a hub at #1 on a 23,ooo,ooo reference, which also does quite well.
   And another on #3 of 11,ooo,ooo
   
   I can't write about SEO as I don't understand it.
   Maybe I can write something about commonsense
   (like how stupid it is tell the world )

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   Bill Manningposted 14 years ago

   Congrads on getting to 1st page on Google. But like others said, your keywords sound like they are not that popular. The key is to pick one that is not so popular that many go for it, yet still popular enough to get decent traffic.
   
   Over time you'll get better at picking out the ones that are just right. Everyone picks some good and bad, it's a lot of trail and error. Good start however.

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      Pearldiverposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Well Said Mate

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   Business Infoposted 14 years ago

   I can write about SEO as I understand it pretty well.
   
   rather than use the Google adwords tool for any kind of realistic traffic estimations I would recommend http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/ - the actual visits you are likely to receive for any keywords will be much closer to the figures on here than on the Adwords tool.
   
   if you are using the adwords tool be sure to use "exact" and I can tell you from good experience that even those figures are generally optimistic by a factor or 3-10 times.
   
   with the authority status of Hubpages.com and it's immediate ranking power of fresh content (new Hubs) I would also make sure to look at Google Trends http://www.google.com/trends to try and identify up and coming phrases before there's too much competition for them yet.
   
   If you can publish a decent hub on a subject as it is just becoming popular you can also very likely get some large traffic surges for several months, sometimes much longer that way.

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      brakel2posted 14 years agoin reply to this

      There is a theory that the number should be 50:1 ratio to number of people searching for keywords compared to number of webpage results. Is that the number at the top of the webpage, and is that number of webpages or individual sites? What about that theory? It really means that the fewer the results, the more chance you have at success.

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         Business Infoposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         havent seen that particular theory before?  but the best way to gauge the actual amount of sites trying to compete for those kws is to use this search
         
         allintitle: keyword1 keyword2 
         
         that will show you the amount of sites with those keywords in their pagetitles, which can be thought of as "trying" for those words.
         
         the total number of pages shown on a normal search is inconsistent and  shows all sites with the words just on the page somewhere, rather than focused on those terms.
         
         hope that helps.

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            Business Infoposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            ..sorry no gaps in the search between the colon and the kws..
            
            so..
            
            allintitle:my keyword

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      Peter Hogganposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      The data wordtracker use is mined from Metacrawler and Dogpile, neither hold much market share and are not used by your typical Google user. It’s just another tool and traffic estimations are best taken with a grain of salt. Google et all do not share this kind of information with anybody and the numbers provided by wordtraker are simply speculative guesswork.

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         Business Infoposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Peter I completely agree with you
         
         however I can tell you from experience of data multiple high ranking sites for decent level keywords that the Wordtracker figures will be much closer to the actual traffic you *receive* from the kws than Adwords is.

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   NaomiRposted 14 years ago

   Congrats! I'm not great at SEO so take my advice lightly. But I sometimes use the keyword tool, but have had more success simply going to Google and figuring out what search phrases people are actually using to find stuff. I might not be using the most expensived keywords, but if a hub ends up getting more volume of smaller clicks, it can add up.

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      Peter Hogganposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      That’s probably the most effective method of keyword research there is. Start by thinking what keyphrases your target customer would type into a search engine and then look at the pages that are returned. You will soon get a feel for what Google thinks is a good page. Also take a peek at the amount of backlinks each page has to get some idea how competitive the term is. Generally the more competitive a term is the more value that term holds.

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   brakel2posted 14 years ago

   The suggestion about checking allintitle:keyword is just great. That is part of the 50:1 theory of number of keywords on webpagss divided by the number of people searching for that keyword. What about that?

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      Business Infoposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      i haven't heard this 50-1 thing at all, could you elaborate?

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         brakel2posted 14 years agoin reply to this

         In my husband's current INC magazine, there was an article on SEO. An SEO marketing expert says to use keywords where the ratio is close to 50:1 The 50 is the number of searchers and the 1 is the number of websites with that keyword. So you would divide the number of websites by the number of people searching to get that ratio or somewhere near that ratio. When you get the numbers, you may know the ratio is not good without even doing the formula.  I would like an opinion on that. I will find the magazine and get the name of the company and post it.

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            Business Infoposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            i would think that ratio is probably more like the other way round to be honest?
            
            theres generally far more sites than there are people looking for their keywords.
            
            id be inclined to ignore that i think, there is an awful lot of nonsense written about seo.

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               brakel2posted 14 years agoin reply to this

               I have been testing that theory, and it does not work out right.It doesn't make sense the other way either as a winning technique for us.

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    Daniel5posted 14 years ago

    I find it REALLY hard to rank on the first few pages on google. Do backlinks really have something to do with ranking?

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       shazwellynposted 14 years agoin reply to this

       Only if they are dofollow backlinks.  And it is about maturation of hubs. And quality of article - not to mention other websites finding your material helpful enough to want to link to you.  Organic backlinking is showered with google love.  Be natural, provide good content and spreading the love helps.
       
       oh... btw... you need to get above 74 on your authorscore before you will see success!  Get hubbing and produce more than 1 hub!

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       Business Infoposted 14 years agoin reply to this

       Do backlinks really have something to do with ranking?
       
       yes, but they need to be good ones to do anything. are you talking about ranking hubs or sites, using links from hubs?

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