Using Google Webmaster Tools To Increase Search Engine Ranking

Here is a rarely used method for helping you gain better search engine rankings for relevant keywords. It is a simple method of looking at the “Top Search Queries” section and picking some posts on your blog, that with just a little push can have search traffic flowing into them.

Method Of How To View Top Search Queries

Go to Google Webmaster Tools. Then from your Dashboard to the site you want. Select the “Overview” tab, then click “Top Search queries”. You can also get here by going through Statistics.

On this page you will see a list of top 20 search queries with the position in the Google SERPS (Search Engine Results Page) and the percentage they each represent. They are fairly inaccurate because the exact position of your page in the search results varies from place to place so be sure to give them a little manual test yourself.

Using The Top Search Queries To Get More Traffic

Look for search a term that you already appear on page 1 for and that already sends a significant portion of traffic. Google search the term to find your post that ranks for it. That is the page you are now trying to push to the very top of the SERP.

If you can see that you are positioned for example 8th for a keyword phrase, and that phrase is sending you 30% of all your search traffic it is definitely worth trying to climb the ladder up the SERPS. Remember the very top position receives approximately 70% of all the traffic. Imagine how much you would get if you snatched the top spot for this phase that already sends 30% of your traffic!

Ideally you want an individual post page, because if your Homepage ranks for a phrase changing the title description of it may have dramatic effects on other search terms it ranks for.

Re-optimize The Page For Your Newly Desired Keywords

So you have found a blog post that you want to move up the SERPS just a few positions to get the number 1 spot. There is a good chance that when you wrote the post you were aiming for slightly different keywords or even didn’t aim for any keywords at all; in which case there are some changes to be made.

• The URL of the page must not be altered or the links you have gained to the page which gave it the high rankings in the first place will no longer function and will point to a 404 error page, so do not change the page slug.
• Do change the title of the post. It should be shortened down so that as much of it as possible is made up of the keywords. I.e. Cut the crap! (but it still has to make sense of course).
• Edit the post. Take a read of the post and swap in your keyword phrase in a few appropriate places
• Alter the meta description. If you use the all in one SEO pack this can easily be done by editing the post and re-filling the description box. Do not keyword stuff, but make sure your phrase is in there at least once.
• Edit the comments. This is a bit cheeky but can give you the extra boost you need. You as the author can alter the readers comments and swap in your phrase where appropriate. Alternatively you could simply reply to some more of the comments with your keywords included in your reply. (probably the better option!).

Do all these in moderation. Adding the keywords into every comment if there are 10 comments is keyword stuffing. Just 1 comment will make the difference, and just 1 or 2 times in the content is fine. Also include a few variations in the order of your phrase.

Photo by ian_ransley

Free Link Building To Your Post

This can be as gray-hat as you want it to be and is essential for getting crowds of people to visit your post via the search engines, because of course links with the keywords in the anchor text increase a pages rankings. I’ll start the list with the most white-hat.

• Link to your post from your other blog posts. You don’t have to write a whole new post to get the chance to link to the post you are trying to gain rankings for. Simply think back to previous posts where people reading them would also be interested in reading your new SEO’d post. You can then edit the related post so it links to your new SEO’d post. If you can’t find a suitable spot in the post to insert the link then you can simply add “related post” at the bottom, with the link underneath with the keywords in the anchor text. The more ‘link juice’ the post you link from has, the more it will effect your SEO’d post’s rankings, so pick a popular post to link from.
• Leave comments linking to your post on blogs that have “nofollow” turned off . There is a list of Dofollow blogs where the URL and name you leave in the comment will count as a valid link in the eyes of the search engines. I’m not recommending spamming these blogs but simply leave 1 well thought out comment on several of them, with your name as the keywords you are aiming for and your URL of the post you are SEOing.
• Submit your post to social bookmarking sites that have “nofollow” turned off. The chances are your post isn’t brand new and so probably wont have a chance of hitting page 1 of these sites, so there is little use in trying to game the system in that sense. Instead making a submission to lots of sites where your vote/bookmark is the only vote build links from lots of different domains and so is more effective. You can use Social Marker to speed up the process. Use this method at your own risk! Doing this risks your credibility if you use the same user name as when “playing fair” and can result in banning your IP or blog from these sites. If your post’s content is good enough your page will rank well before you need to consider resorting to this method.

Summing Up

It’s a very logical and simple method that can dramatically increase blog traffic sending crowds of people to your blog without too much effort. I generally don’t do too much work when it comes to SEO. Once my blog is optimized I just ‘roll with it’, but this is a great way to compensate for that.

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