I was checking out some stats and search engine results for My Newbie Blog today. I started by spending some time at StatCounter.com looking at my recent keyword activity. I am pasting the most recent keyword activity here:

Most of the traffic comes from the keywords how to create a blog. I have been working to get a better return for my site with this keyword. If I can get the site to a page one return from Google for this keyword search the traffic will increase dramatically. Right now I am getting a 46 position on page 5.

I am also working on another keyword that will bring traffic if I can get in on to page 1. The keyword is starting a blog. Right now I am not getting any traffic from the keyword but I am returning a 76 position on page 8.

I get a little traffic from the word scratch used in certain phrases. Initially I was targeting the keyword starting a blog from scratch. I get a position 6 and 7 (double return) on page 1 for the keyword but not much traffic.

I also get a good return for start a blog from scratch, again page 1 this time in position 4, also a double return.

All of this is to demonstrate how important good keywords are. You might get a good search engine result for a keyword but if doesn’t bring traffic it isn’t very helpful. Spend your efforts on your best keywords. One of the ways you will know which keywords work in the beginning of your blog is by the traffic you get from MSN. They seem to add new sites faster than Google. The major traffic comes from Google, so if you are getting traffic from MSN you will get a lot more traffic from Google. Keep writing article using your best keywords and the traffic will come.

I wrote an article a few days ago giving you an update on how My Newbie Blog was doing with search results for my two main keywords, newbie blog, and how to create a blog. There has been a little positive movement on both keywords this week. Newbie blog has moved up to position 3 on page 1:

The site that is now sitting in position 2 just showed up. I checked it out and it has quite a bit of content but not to many links and a few SEO problems. I should be able to move into position 2 like I said last week. The site in position 1 has thousands of links, a page rank of six and pretty good SEO. It will be there for a while. The other keyword, which is how to create a blog, moved up to page 4. Just barely, it is in position 40.

It had dropped back into the 60’s for a couple of days. I am confident that in time this site will move up to page one . There are a few things I need to do to make that happen and I will keep working on it.

On May 9th I wrote an article called SEO Case Study where we examined the Search Engine Results (SEO) of a site we work with called Evangelism Software. I was checking out the site today and had some interesting results to share with you. At the bottom of page 1, try and guess what showed up? The article I wrote talking about the keyword ‘Evangelism Software’. Why is the article outranking a page that is an exact match? Good question. This site is older than the ‘Evangelism Software’ site. It has more content and more links pointed at it. So in the short term it ranked higher. In case you were curious here is where the actual site returned on page 2:

The site is still hanging around. I told you in the first article that the site had the number 1 spot for nearly a month and didn’t get any traffic. The people at Evangelism Software have to decide how much work they want to put in the site. They could post a lot of fresh content and build links and get back to number 1, but, if there isn’t any traffic for the keyword, is it worth it? I suggested they let the site sit for a while, use it to link to their other sites, and see where it ends up as it ages. With a site like Evangelism Software, adding a post once a month ought to keep it fairly close to page 1. See if it gets any page rank on Google’s next update and then go from there. SEO is an important factor in how to create a blog.

P.S. I used the keyword Evangelism Software five times in this post in a very natural way. Let’s watch and see where this article ends up on the search results in a few days.