Paul Woods

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Last month I set myself a Search Engine Optimization challenge.  Essentially I wanted to substantially increase the traffic, ultimately revenue from a website that I run focused on Office 2007 help, tips, tricks, and tutorials called The New Paperclip.

The first tweak I made was to not focus on keywords, or backlinks or any other sexy SEO topic.  I know this might sound a little backward, but I actually focused on the reader first!

That’s right!  This wasn’t to increase my pagerank or anything like that… all I did was make it easier for someone using a search engine to make a decision on whether or not to click the search engine result that pointed to my site.

Obviously I was making it pretty hard for readers to make the right choice, because almost overnight (as soon as Google spidered my site again) traffic DOUBLED!  That’s right… DOUBLED!

How easy is it for your potential readers to decide if a page on your site is worthy or not?  Do a search and see what title comes up.  If it is long winded like “The New Paperclip: Tips, Tricks and Tutorials for Microsoft Office…” and does not have anything to do with not only the specific content of the page, but the search terms that the person used… then you are in big trouble!  You need to tweak straight away!

To learn about how I specifically made the tweak to my blog post titles using WordPress… click here

Remember - SEO isn’t all about the search engine - really it should be called Human Search Optimisation - because at the end of the day it is the reader looking for the content, not the search engine.

Actually the topic of Human Search Optimization sounds pretty interesting, I might see if I can dig up some more information or insight about it in the coming weeks.

This is one of many posts dedicated to my Search Engine Optimization Challenge on www.thenewpaperclip.com.  Read more in the SEO Challenge category.

The problem:  Whenever one of the pages on The New Paperclip comes up in a search page, the title on the search result means absolutely nothing to the searcher.

To illustrate, in the example in the image to the left, you can see the SERP for the search phrase "word 2007 comments" in which The New Paperclip has #1 spot.  But if you were searching for "word 2007 comments" you would not click on search result #1.

Why?  Because the title of the search result has nothing to do with the search phase.  You and I both know that if we were searching for "word 2007 comments" that we would all click on "Using Comments in Word 2007 documents" before "The New Paperclip: Tips Tricks and Tutorials for Microsoft Office…"

This problem is caused by a default behaviour in the popular WordPress blogging platform that I use.  Essentially it puts the blog title first, before the post title - hence why every single listing  I have on SERP anywhere has the same generic boring irrelevant title

So… how to fix the problem?

Well, I have upgraded to WordPress v2.5 which has a new feature as part of its core functionality (used to be a plugin) which allows you to swap the post title and blog title around.  Check out how to do this easy tweak here.

So Tweak 1 in my Search Engine Optimisation Challenge is complete.  Have no idea when Google will pick up the change, so stay tuned for the results over the coming weeks.

As those of you who know me well (or have read this blog for a while) will know, I run a little side project at www.thenewpaperclip.com.  Basically The New Paperclip was something that kept me busy for a while about a year ago - I wrote about 50 blog posts on tips and tricks in the new version of Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Outlook etc).

I learnt a lot (it was a very good way to come up to speed on the new products)… and I managed to make a little money on the side thanks to Google Adsense… emphasis on little!

Despite having the #1 spot on Google SERPs for "Word 2007 Undo" and 35 other keyword combos out of my Top 100 keywords… more important things have come up in my life…

Now, after 8months I am brushing off the cobwebs over at The New Paperclip as part of my "I actually looked at my Google Analytics analytics and saw heaps of obvious stuff I can do to improve this website" challenge.

For the last three months, the stats have been pretty static, but there is a slight downward trend - not a good thing.  And that has been reflected in the monthly revenue figures in Adsense.

So… for the next quarter, I am challenging myself to do achieve the following goals:

• Increase visits 500%
• Increase page views/visit by 100% over the last quarter
• Increase revenue by 300%

Where did I get those numbers from?  Gut feel.  What techniques will I use to get near those goals?  Again gut feel - unless any of you have any ideas you want to share!

That being said it will be interesting to see what can be achieved over three months focusing on key SEO optimisation techniques, and maybe some fresh content.

The baseline has been set today.

• Visits: 0% increase
• Page Views/Visit: 0% increase
• Revenue: 0% increase

Time will tell… the final results will be in 30 June.  But I will keep you updated on progress along the way.