When you expect certain keyword phrases to do very well for you, you spend time optimizing your site for them. Then, several months later, you see a significant volume of organic traffic to your site through those keyword phrases -- but nobodys buying anything!
I'd like to show you how to pinpoint which keyword phrases arent so relevant for your site, and how to determine better keyword phrases to target.
Which Keyword Phrases Don't Work
The first thing you need to figure out which keyword phrases arent converting, and to stop focusing on them.
Heres how to do that...
Hopefully youve already got Google Analytics code installed. Also, you should have already some goals and goal funnels in Google Analytics. (If you havent got that done, go and do it " and while youre at it register your site on Googles Webmaster Tools. Then come back and read the rest of this article in a few weeks time.)
Log in to your Google Analytics Account, click on Traffic Sources in the left hand navigation menu, then click on Keywords in the sub-menu.
In the middle of the screen you should see a tab thats open called Site Usage. To the right of this tab you should see one or multiple Goal Set tabs. Once you click on the applicable Goal Set tab youll be able to see which keyword phrases are referring the highest percentage of goal conversion rates " and of course the keywords which arent converting.
Now you can see if youre spending any significant volume of time and effort on trying to rank keyword phrases which arent converting for you. If so, its probably time to make better use of your time by trying to rank different keyword phrases in search engines.
Which Keyword Phrases Work
Now you need to determine which keywords convert best so you know can use your time in the most efficient possible manner.
Again, use Google Analytics and the goals that you set up to determine which keyword phrases are converting the best.
But theres also another useful Google tool that you should use to determine your best performing keyword phrases, and thats Googles Webmaster Tools.
Once you have your website registered with Google Webmaster Tools youre able to view a dashboard of search queries that people have used to find your site. You can see how many times a particular keyword search has resulted in a page from your site appearing in Googles search results, the average position of your rankings, the number of clicks through to your site and the click-through-rate percentage.
From this data youll be able to determine which keyword phrase rankings are vanity " and which are likely to result in real life business for you.