This tip isn’t very specific to WordPress, but something I realized only a few days ago.
If you have an article that is ranking well in the search engines, let’s say “wordpress skins” or “picasa web tips“, either of those searches may generate a decent amount of traffic for either Weblogtoolscollection.com or Ginside.com.
Well, let me back up a second here. I recently installed the Firestats plugin and it’s been amazing. It’s capable of providing me with the recent referrers, so I can see where my traffic is coming from, and also provide a list of my top posts.
So what I did was I took some of those top posts and analyzed them for what keyword they were ranking really well for. I then wrote another article with the similar theme and makeup with keywords to generate some fresh content. I noticed that I was in the top10 for a specific keyword, such as I mentioned above, so I wrote an additional article. Guess what? I now have two top10 ranking listings in the Google index. Users are going to be twice as likely to visit your site now because of the visibility.
You may come to the conclusion that this is an elementary practice, but it’s a practice that works and is great to help inform authors about.
Please note though, don’t just create duplicate content and write the same thing over with the same title, but be creative and some up with a new twist or do a follow-up article about that topic.
I’ve been using FireStats for a few months now and think you are absolutely correct.
Only thing I would add is to make sure to differentiate the content enough that you won’t be penalized by Google for duplicate content (in other words, if it is to similar, you could actually make your original ranking go down, rather than getting two posts on the front page of a search result).
@Kyle – that’s true yes, you do need to be careful. What I’ve noticed for some of my search terms though, is that is has really made a good impact and kept my site higher in the rankings. I’m still waiting to see long term how it works, but I’m hoping it will actually start bumping my site up even more because of the relevancy.
I noticed the same thing, if i have one post high in the SERPs (1st, 2nd or 3rd position) and i write a similar post, it often goes near the first one.
It’s actually a tactic that I’m starting to use more and more to see how effectively it will raise my monthly visitor rate.
I hope to come up with other tips and tricks like this to share with everyone. This one specifically may not and is probably not revolutionary, but it was something to bring into the light for publishers to know about.
I have some more reports from SES San Jose last week coming out soon. Feel free to take a look or subscribe if you want to read more. There will be some very interesting articles.
That is a really great tip. I think it will be extremely useful for sites (like mine) that have a pretty broad range of topics. I can use it to basically find which of my articles are pulling the most traffic and start migrating towards those themes… thus creating more of a niche for my site. Thanks again!
I’d like to suggest a tool that works somehow along these lines but makes much more sense in my opinion:
http://www.Hittail.com
Hittail provides an amazing combination of SEO-efficiency and inspiration, giving you new ideas for posts related to what you’ve been writing about already. There’s also a wordpress plugin there that makes it completely effortless to start using the service.
You can read much more about all that on their blog, at
http://www.hittail.com/blog
🙂
Halina
thanks for the tip. would try Firestat soon 🙂
by the way, one can try the 103bee long tail stats too
have you guys not tried Mint?
one of the best stats packages I’ve tried to give me just what I want and super sexy too.
Jonathan
In many ways that is unethical
You are looking to steal the traffic from a neighbouring site that was kind enough to link to you in the first place.
The ethical approach would be to help solidify the ranking of the site linking to you, which at the same time helps you rank better, not just on that one post but for all your content.
I really didn’t expect unethical SEO to be so lauded on WLTC
The process of finding Niche markets requires exploring and experimenting. I have used blogs and webstats programs(FireStats) to determine what people are interested in. This method uses this same technique to hone or focus in on your market.
I also us the Popularity plugin for Alex King to find the most popular article on my site and then expand on these. This is what people are coming to your site for.
One other thing I do is keep a keyword list by my computer so when I’m posting I know which words I want to add to the post. This keeps me focused on the niche I am serving and the SEO target.
Why didn’t you just use mint? I’m trying out firestats giving it a testrun 🙂
At this moment you are waked up on technorati 😉
Hi !
It´s a good tip use firestats, in fact, what I do sometimes once an article is ranking well is improve it with these new and better keywords shown in firestats, but I delete the old one once that I´ve got a better place in SERPS.
I don’t see how this is unethical. Everything seems fair game. Your getting lots of traffic from one post, making a second and getting more traffic seems like a logical solution. Google does allow for a max of two page from one site.
Firestats does give some wonderfully detailed info! However, I had a small database problem that popped up out of nowhere, which resulted in the Firestats installation going kaputz. Unfortunately there wasn’t really any way for me to delete the tables for some reason (luckily the server admin is always on call :D) so that was resolved. Now that the SEO issue has popped up, I think I’ll try and install it again 🙂
@Andy: I don’t understand why you think it’s unethical SEO. You’re providing more content that is relevant to search query that a person is looking for. If you could clarify what you mean by “stealing traffic from a neighboring site,” that would be great because I’m not clear what you mean by it. I’m not stealing traffic from any friendly site, it’s purely competition in the search industry.
@everyone with mint: Mint isn’t free. Firestats is. That’s really what it comes down to. I can get the same exact results I need through Firestats which is free so I don’t see a reason why I should go spend $30 on a piece of software which does the same thing.
Forgot to mention: I can also recommend Slimstat-Ex, which is based on SlimStat. http://082net.com/tag/wp-slimstat-ex/ I’ve been using it in conjunction with the WordPress.com stats, as well as Firestats (before and now)
Jonathan maybe I misread this part “It’s capable of providing me with the recent referrers, so I can see where my traffic is coming from”
I have had situations in the past where I have had a high ranking post on a site, gaining lots of traffic that linked out to a few sites.
One of those sites saw the traffic they received on a constant basis, thus wrote a post the same as my original, and as they had a newer post, and more sitewide juice, I lost that traffic stream.
Great tool.
Up till now i have been using google analytics to find traffic sources and keywords, but this takes it to the next level.
Thank you for this tip. I am searching for a similar plugin and will definitely use the Firestats. Also, your technique is worth following. Thanks