One Mistake That Cost Me Traffic - (and how I fixed it!)

Published: Sat, 04/14/12

Hey, guys, it's Erica Stone.  I know, it's been
awhile and, for some of you, this will be the
first email you've seen from me.  (I'm obviously
not one of those daily list-senders...)

I've got some information to share with you for more
traffic to your sites and it's all free (and Google safe!).
 

MY MISTAKE AND HOW I FIXED IT

Of course, I've got to make a little confession
in order to lead into this topic.
 
See, sometimes I get a little too proud of myself
and I type into Google the biggest keywords
I rank for (even if they're loooong keywords)
just to see that I'm still sitting there in the
top spots. (Please tell me I'm not the only one...)
 
Sure, I have a tool to check rank, Market
Samurai for one (which has now limited free
rank checks but is my favorite tool for analyzing
competition) and the free Firefox Plug-in called
Rank Checker, for another.
 
But there's something about doing a Google
search and seeing your site sitting there all happy
and ranking well, you know?
 
Until...you see that it's not ranking quite as
well as it was. 
 
And that was the case.  My site had slipped
one spot on the first page of Google.  A darn
competitor (with a crappy site, of course) had
snuck on in there and jumped ahead of me
when I wasn't looking.  

But there was one other thing I noticed that
I NEVER would have seen if I'd simply been
using a rank checker.
 
My Meta Description was just plain wrong.
It was blah, bland, and boring all in one.
It dawned on me, if I think it's boring, what
do searchers think when they see it?

For those of you who don't know, meta descriptions
are the few lines of text that show up under
your search result listing in Google.  It's like
free ad space that you can use to attract people
to your site when they're reviewing their list
of search matches in Google. 
 
Was I missing traffic simply because of my
poorly crafted meta descriptions?  Could I get
more traffic - even if my rank never improved -
just be doing a better job at advertising my own site? 
 
Guess what...it's a YES!
 
I rewrote four meta descriptions - three for inner
pages of my site and one for the home page.
 
I waited a few days for Google to crawl and index the
new descriptions and checked Google Webmaster Tools.
 
By changing the dates on those reports, I can
compare my click through rate in Google when
the old meta descriptions were showing to the
click through rate for when the new meta
descriptions were actively showing. 
 
(It's under Your Site On the Web/Search
Queries in Google Webmaster Tools.)

All pages with modified meta descriptions showed
an increased click through rate for MULTIPLE
keywords leading to those pages.
 
The home page saw a 38% improvement in the
clickthrough rate for JUST my main keyword.
 
There was positive improvement on other
keywords leading to my home page, too.
Same for those 3 inner pages.

All together, those few meta description changes
brought my site traffic back up by an average of 100
clicks a day. 
 
Your content might not be ranking as well yet
but that doesn't mean you should ignore this strategy.
 
Prepare NOW for when your pages do rank well
and make sure you're crafting strong, unique
meta descriptions for every page of your site in
order to capture as much free traffic as you can.

This strategy works for Squidoo lenses, too, as
many of you are following the Squidoo Niche Blaster
strategy.  That first few lines of text in your intro
are usually grabbed as the meta description for
your lens. Modify it to work harder for you in
Google and republish your lens with the new text.
 
Two great articles that helped me rewrite
my meta descriptions:
Take a few minutes today and check your meta
descriptions.

 
BACKLINKING AMIDST THE GOOGLE "SCARE"
That whole meta description stuff is great, but what
do you do to get pages to rank better in Google these days?

If you're reading any IM forums, you've seen people
screaming about nastygrams from Google
in their Wembaster Tools accounts for having
detected unnatural links. (None of my sites have
received this message.)

Here's what I know works to improve rankings and traffic on your sites:

My favorite backlink methods are still working. Bookmarking,articledirectories/syndication,
web 2.0 (gotta love Squidoo!), and RSS feeds.
I still do all the backlinking I've described in Extreme Review and Squidoo Niche Blaster.

Make your sites more than just a collection
of reviews.  They should include informational
posts that help boost your overall content.
In fact, that's the topic of my next product, due
out in a few days.  It will show you how to find
the informational articles you should add to your
site to build authority, build traffic, and improve
the inner-links to your best review posts.

Build sites other people find worth sharing.
The more natural backlinks you can get, the less
you have to worry about backlinks AT ALL. 
This requires getting creative, doing some research,
figuring out what your competitors aren't doing
for the people in your niche and then doing it. 

On one of my sites, I have a very simple
comparison table I built using the WP Table Reloaded plug-in.
 
No graphics added, no colored borders, just a list
of facts.  That page has been pinned on Pinterest
just over 40 times and not by me or anyone I paid.
(I don't even have a Pinterest account.) It's just
that no one else had put that information together
in that way before.

Update existing content.  Find something new
and useful to add to reviews you've already written.
 
I'd found that one product on my site was no
longer being sold and had been replaced by a
new model.
 
I added just a few lines of text about that
new model four days ago and now rank
#11 for "(new model) review" and #1
for the comparison of the two models even
though I HAVEN'T written a review of that model
yet or added any new post targeting that new
model.  The power of existing content.

Keep your eyes peeled for my next product
and you'll see just how easy it is to find great
content you should add to your Amazon review
sites to make them really stand out and, more 
importantly, get more traffic.
 
Wishing you great success,

Erica Stone
erica@extremereviewer.com

PS - If you found this helpful, you may be interested
in tips shared in earlier emails:
 
Email Archives #1
Email Archives #2