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How is this done, is it just a case of recognising what's popular and adding more relative content?
That is a thought. But what about what is popular, but is missing, and as such traffic goes elsewhere?
You are already getting tarffic for the content you have, what you want is traffic for the content you don't yet have. To get that you need to add content that is wanted, but by definition you haven't thought of, or at least have not implemented, yet.
Matt
what you want is traffic for the content you don't yet have. To get that you need to add content that is wanted, but by definition you haven't thought of, or at least have not implemented, yet.
I guess that, If I could get access to the logs of a successful competitors site, that information would be like gold? It would be possible to find out what their popular content is and their referrals?
Step "U" from Brett's 26 steps...
This is something that I've just started implementing, looking at the recurring keyword phrases referrers have used and writing content based around them.
I guess that, If I could get access to the logs of a successful competitors site, that information would be like gold?
Could be. Could be crap, if all they focus on is a few keywords and lots of inbound links.
There are simple and straightforward methods to build a strong wide keyword net that will sustain you through Google algorithm changes.
If you can only think of three keywords, A, B, and C, just write them down, one per line. Start at the top of the list. Search in Google for A. For each of the top ten hits, use a keyword analysis tool to find other plausible keywords (and keyword combinations) that are relevant, but not already on your list. Add them to the list.
Then go back to the search for A, for each of the top 10 hits, click on Google's "similar pages" link. Go through each of those looking for not-quite-as-obviously-related terms to add to your list.
Now, you're ready to go to the second keyword, B, and repeat the process. Clearly, just doing the first item on your list should generate dozens of other keywords. When you get a couple hundred keywords on your list, mark your place (so you can come back and resume someday).
Now start writing content. But don't write serious, big, authoritative items. Write tiny, 2-paragraph pages, each devoted to a particular keyword or keyword phrase on your list. The goal is to write them as fast as possible, because you don't know yet which ones are likely to offer a good return on your invested time. Be sure to follow basic SEO practices (study up on those if you haven't already): get the search term in the title, as well as an <h1>, etc. Make sure you maintain a sitemap page that contains the title of each of your articles; it will generate some serendiptious keyword combinations that you did not anticipate.
Do not spend time and money on tools to tell you where you're ranking in Google for any of these terms. Spend that time studying your weblogs. You should be able to read every line in the raw log every day when you're just starting out and don't have much traffic. You do not care about where you rank in Google, you care about what actual users actually do: that information is in your weblogs, not in a keyword ranking tool.
Will any of those tiny pages rank #1 and become a goldmine? Not likely, but you can at least start to get some traffic (if you can beg, borrow, or steal enough inbound links to start off as at least a PR3, that would be very helpful).
As you keep writing, you study those weblogs every day. If you're getting any SE referrals, you are quickly going to see distinct patterns in activity. You will see keyword combinations that tell you the person was searching for an answer you don't provide. Add a page that answers that question, no, is totally devoted and SEOed to answering that question.
Now you have two pages related to a particular keyword combination: one was a "test hole" you drilled based on your keyword research, and the other was in response to actual user behavior you saw in your weblogs. Time to start a cluster. Make sure those two pages are interlinked, either as a parent-child hierarchy, or via on-page hotlinks, or both.
Make sure you follow good SEO practices in forming that interlinking. People often obsesss about getting inbound links with just the right anchor text, and they overlook the fact that your intra-site links carry weight with Google too, and you have total control over the anchor text of those links.
People also often only focus on navigation links and overlook many opportunities for inline, on-page crosslinks. Are you writing a page about Red Widgets made by Acme Inc? Do you have another page devoted to describing who Acme Inc is? Then on your Red Widgets page, the first time you use the phrase "Acme Inc", make it a hot-link to that other page.
Constantly look for those crosslinking opportunities. They not only carry some Google weight, but they help people find something else relevant on your website instead of immediately hopping back to Google. You don't have to warp your text to introduce these cross links. Does it really make no sense at all for your Red Widgets page to mention that Red Widgets are made by Acme Inc? Fine, then add a "See Also:" section at the bottom of that page that does the job.
Keep an eye out in your weblogs for Google referrals that came from page 2 of the SERPs (that's the "start=nn" bit in the Referer field). That tells you that a) you're getting traffic for that term and b) you're within shooting distance of being on page 1 for that term and significantly increasing the traffic. Time to focus on expanding the cluster of pages you have for that term.
This is all very mechanical and straightforward. You will not get rich quick via this method. But you can build an ever-increasing income that will be much more likely to weather SE algorithm changes than methods that are based on making big bucks from a few keywords.
I'm trying to optimise the content for one of my blogs which I started at the beginning of the year. I've been writing around 10 posts per day and currently have 670 pages, up until last Monday I was getting between 1100-1200 Google referrals a day but since gaining PR3 from 0 the traffic from "G" has dropped by half, hopefully it'll come back but in the mean time I'll just start writing smaller posts, based around uncommon/less competitive keyword phrases.
If you have access to raw log files, it's a great way of seeing comprehensive data for your site.
