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Translating Site Ranking Into Traffic  By
Stoney deGeyter
Anybody who has been online for any length of time, and has had any success with achieving good search engine placement, knows one thing: Rankings are not cast in iron. In fact they are very fluid. Sometimes you can hold onto a top spot for years, other times you're constantly battling to stay on the first page. That's just the nature of search engine algorithms. While rankings can be important for generating exposure through the search engines, there is another factor that is even more important than whether you hold the number 2 or 8 spot for your keywords. Rankings, without traffic are pointless. In fact, while rankings can be a significant factor in growing your traffic numbers, traffic itself is not reliant on rankings. You can be in the number one spot and still get less traffic than your competitor in the number three spot. And even beyond that, you can often get better traffic (higher conversion percentages) not being in that top spot. The question then becomes, how do you maximize your rankings--regardless of position--and turn that into the kind of traffic that produces strong conversions? Let's explore a few ways that you can generate more traffic to your site, despite any particular placement in the SERPs. Choose Relevant Keywords Keyword research and selection is important in determining now only what kind of traffic you will get but how much traffic potential you have overall. Every so often we perform a top to bottom review of a client's SEO campaign, looking at work performed weeks, months, and years ago. Looking at the analytics, keywords, and on-page optimization is sometimes pretty revealing. One of the things we find quite often in our reviews is that the keywords that were chosen in months past are no longer providing the benefit that they once were. In fact, looking at keyword search trends we find that many keywords simply fall out of favor, being searched far less frequently over time, while other phrases are growing in search volume.
Reviewing optimized keywords regularly is a good way to spot new trends and analyze performance of older keywords. You can often easily adjust your optimization strategies quickly to adapt to the new, better performing keywords. Just be careful that you're not sacrificing quality for quantity. That's a mistake that you won't want to make. Create Compelling Titles and Descriptions A good title and description can often provide a far greater traffic benefit than a higher position on the page. While there are always those that click blindly on the first link on the page, most will take a few seconds to scan the results to make sure they click only on those sites that appear to be most likely to provide what they were searching for. Using keywords in your title and description is essential, but titles and descriptions need to be more than a laundry list of keywords. This is your mini-billboard. Take the time to craft your titles and descriptions in a way that compels the searcher to click on your listing rather than the others on the page. Go for the click, not the ranking. Analyze Competing Websites Continue reading this article.
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