|
Mojo -> RE: any way to see site stats for site you don't own? (1/16/2006 15:15:18)
|
Your first step should be tracking conversions. You should be able to point to the source of every conversion (obviously due to technical issues not all visitors pass referring data). You should be able to provide referring domains and any keywords used if the converted visitor originated from a search engine. These conversion numbers will become your benchmark and once you have this information you can start to make changes as you can easily tell if you're having an improvement - or not.
I am always amazed when management is willing to scrap an old, established site in favor of something new that comes with nothing more than the hot air of promise - or worse yet - the stench of potential.
Here are a few observations based upon the phrase 'lake of the Ozarks golf' (I'll just refer to it as phrase below).
On the homepage phrase is only found in the Meta tags. You should try and work the phrase into the homepage somewhere. Also include it in the anchor text of a link from either the homepage or a secondary (one click off home) page. On the page that you link to make sure you include the phrase in at least one paragraph and use a close variation of the phrase in a couple of paragraphs.
Add more pages of unique content to the site.
Get a few backlinks with the phrase used as the anchor text. Link some to the homepage, but even more to the targeted phrase page. The deep links are important to have.
For the phrase you’re currently ranked at #40 in Google, not ranked in MSN and #75 in Yahoo. You have 106 pages indexed by Google. The competition has 108, 680, 15300, 854, 57, 89, 173, 53, 11, and 114 pages indexed by Google. If your pages are of OK content you have enough to rank. I suspect your internal linking scheme isn't helping your site rank.
Your site is exactly the kind of site searchers probably want when they search for the phrase - you just have to help the search engines understand what your site is about. You need more pages that talk about golf, golf needs, clubs, tips, tricks, grass... anything that relates to golf where you can insert your targeted keyword phrases. For example, this page - lakevalleygolf.com/restaurant.htm - while providing useful information to your visitors - does very little to boost your site traffic. You need to flesh out the page and add targeted phrases such as "the restaurant is located within the golf course" and "play 9 rounds of golf on the Lake of the Ozarks and then enjoy a breakfast buffet". Now, the page starts to become more about a restaurant on a golf course at the Lake of the Ozarks then just about an ordinary restaurant that has little to do with the overall site. This is just one small example of many you can do throughout the site.
Since you're using images in place of text links for navigation try to alter the ALT tags to reflect your target audience. Instead of alt="Information about our Greenside restaurant" try alt="Lake Valley Golf Greenside Restaurant" . It's not a big difference, but it's going to be the aggregation of all the little things that will boost your site.
Now, the toughest part (for most webmasters) seems to be backlinks. IMO, backlinks are the most important aspect of your sites traffic. The top 10 for the phrase has links from 100 to 3400 separate domains. The average seems to be in the 400 range. Your site has links from 82 different domains. You need more, but more importantly you need more from pages that relate to your industry (golf). The site doesn't have to be a golf site, but it's much better if the page the backlink is on is about golf.
Anyhow, this is my $0.02 overview. You should be able to dramatically increase traffic by following the above advice.
|
|
|
|
