SEO Challenge ’09 – Week 5 Update
Ajith | Feb 2009 | SEO Challenge
At the outset, my apologies for posting the Week 5 update late by a day. I have been super busy and exhuasted with the regular work and non-blogging life. However, today when I took a look at the Week 5 analytic statistics I got energized as some really skyrocketing graphs were a pleasure to watch and I wished those were my stats 
!
We are left with hardly a week for the SEO Challenge ’09 competition to come to an end and I can see that the top 7-8 people are putting their act together with some amazing keyword job. Though the top 5 positions are still ruled by last weeks’ leaders, there are signs of some serious competition going on among positions 6 onwards as well. The following are the five blogs that are leading at the end of Week 5 based on the average number of daily visits the past 42 days (from Dec 29, 2008 to Feb 08, 2009):
http://www.millionclues.com (728.10%)
http://www.otooo.com (676.90%)
http://www.technosamrat.com/ (559.59%)
http://www.techpp.com/ (358.50%)
http://www.madworldwii.com/ (172.75%)
Please check out the our live scorecard for more details.
Week 5 Highlights
Folks! I tell you what, there’re some really unpredictable results (in terms of top three) are in the offing as I can see some sudden twists for the last two days. Also please note that for the final calculation the search results of this year alone come into play and hence if somebody had very low traffic during December end may see better final results. Keep guessing who will emerge the winner!
SEO Strategies Used
I could arm-twist the top 5 to share their strategies. The following are the strategies adopted by the leading SEO experts of the competition.
Arun of http://www.millionclues.com/:
I really dont have a set-out SEO strategy, but after the contest started, I have done the following things on my blog:
1. I did a quick optimization of the pages so as to improve load times. It’s then I discovered that even simple things like removing an unwanted plugin or a line of CSS code can dramatically improve load times
2. I started using Google Trends and Goolge Keyword Research tool. But I never wrote a post so that it was a popular keyoword. I would write the posts the normal way, and before posting them on Million Clues, I did a quick SEO using the keywords available.
3. I started fully exploiting the All-In-One SEO plugin.
4. I was really regular in December and I posted lots of posts. As you had said in the announcing post, I got the visits for those posts in January and I still get them.
Well Arun, the first one is definitely not a SEO strategy. Would you like to elaborate on (2) and (3)?
Simon of http://www.otooo.com/:
Basically I looked for trends such as the “Australian Open tennis” to blog about, and then formed my keyword rich titles using Google Suggest (seeing what was being searched for when I entered “Australian Open 2009″ etc) and also using Google Trends.
Then I have also made some other posts titled buy “general product name” and then used tags to create tag pages with a specific product name being used for they tag (if that makes sense).
An example of this is the post I made titled something like “Mathews Compound Bows – Buy Cheap Matthews Bows For Sale” and than I used tags such as “mathews monster xlr8″ and “mathews hyperlite”, which are specific product names – this also helps with affiliate sales on Amazon.com
Thanks for the details and example Simon.
Samrat of http://www.technosamrat.com/:
Some of the strategies I had used..
Just changed the theme to include some ‘H’ tags. There were no ‘H’ tags initially and I took some time to add them for the post title.
Highlight the keywords most often searched. I observed that ighlighting “Free Antivirus” or “Best Antivirus for Windows” is better than just highlighting “Norton Antivirus”. As there is a great competition for common terms I was looking at the search terms for eg: “Free Apps for N72″, “Cool Games for Nokia Phones”, “Vista Freeware Apps” etc..
Take some time to analyze the Google Analytics Data. There is really a wealth of information there. Analyze the traffic to your site and set a realistic goal which will give more enthu. This is what I did for this month and moreover this comptetion gave me more enthu (Thanks Ajith!!).
Increased the post frequency from 1 to 3 and scheduled the post in a timely manner rather than flooding them all at a single shot.
Try to link back to the older post as they will definitely bring in some more traffic with the increase in Link Juice and a top posts data on home page will add more benefit with the home page PR flowing to them.
Analyze the keywords that are driving more traffic and focus on the keywords. It’s not necessary to write all the posts on the same topic. For eg if “DVD to AVI converter” is bringing a lot of traffic then you can write an article on “DVD to AVI converter for Apple iPhone” etc.
Try to write articles on the topics that can catch more attention and attraction. Do watch the Blog-O-Sphere and see what others are writing on.
Google Search trends and Google Analytics will be very useful and do concentrate on other search engines also. Google is not the only one !!!
Using the All-in-one-SEO plugin is very helpful. Do use the keywords effectively. I always use the keywords that are simple. Use keywords that
have less competetion. I use keywords that I may use when searching for a similar thing.Using the language translator has also helped me a lot. It increased my traffic by almost 20%. But I read that it has got its own disadvanatges.
These are the startegies rather say…. things that I kept in mind….
Thanks for sharing those tips Samrat. I guess, you have put a lot of aspects together to get those amazing results.
Raju of http://www.techpp.com/:
I never planned for search traffic, even for this week my strategy was same – catch hold of the latest buzz on the internet and try utilizing it to my advantage. One major SEO technique I have been following lately and which has yielded major gains is usage of h2, h3, h4 tags in the articles. Structuring of articles is very essential for Google bot to crawl your
article. Sufficient and relevant images add to the advantage as well. That is it!
Raju, thanks for that. More than the ‘H’ tags, you have done a great job of picking traffic-driving most current keywords, I think.
Ryan of http://www.madworldwii.com/:
I did some YouTube video marketing. It hasn’t shown any traffic on Google Analytics that I can remember seeing but my videos have had over 2,000 views.
http://www.youtube.com/user/MadWorldWii
Ryan, YouTube marketing related traffic will be more referral in nature than search, I think.
Thank you all for sharing your secrets. I would like to experiment some of these tricks as long as it is in the context of my blog and its niche
Dollar$hower SEO Challenge ’09 Sponsors
Good luck for the final week!! Please note that all the scrutinizing of your search related visits will happen this week and any bad SEO activities will attract ban. Stay clean please to help me reduce my manual work
You are right, picking up the hottest and latest keywords has been my strategy, which is helping me to stay alive in Top 5. If you remember after week 2, I was expecting myself to drop out of top 5 since I thought the same strategy would not help me continuously. But luckily it has worked still. With my busy schedule at work, its tough to post more than 1 or 2 articles per day, more posts = more SE traffic, am missing out on that. Everyone has done a great work increasing the SE traffic but in particular I am very impressed with Samrat. Look at the stats! Mindblowing!!
Raju’s last blog post… Tragic Victorian Bushfires Mapped by Google
and yeah, I must thank others for spelling out their strategies, very helpful for everyone else here. Waiting for Samrat’s version as well!
Raju’s last blog post… Tragic Victorian Bushfires Mapped by Google
Congratulations to top 5 and also all the best.
I have moved from number 10 to 9 position. I will be somewhere there by the end of the contest.
This is because my Week 1 is 1276.88. Check any other blog all are in 3 digits or 2 digits figure.
In week 5, i have reached 2082.95. So, it clearly shows that those who already have significant search engine traffic has very less chance to top it even though they get increase their traffic.
Ajith, i think Otto will go to 1 because, his traffic increased from week 1
Nihar’s last blog post… How to Merge Multiple PDF Documents for Free
Well the competition is becoming more hot now
All the best to all of you. I really like the tips of Simon mostly the part about Google Suggest which is also a great tool. However I have one question to the participants and to you Ajith:
Which is the best to work with on google trend… the keywords among the top 10 or the ones among them last near the 100th? My question may seem weird but I will be glad to know the exact steps of how the participants uses the google trend keywords and if with other tricks to attract maximum traffics from search engines.
@Nihar,
It will be interesting to see Ajith’s response !
I understand what you are trying to say
@Kurt,
Yes, keyword research is something I would love to learn. Its a very gray topic, looks very complex for me.
@ Raju, I like what you said, catching the Latest Buzz on the Internet and other optimization you made are really amazing, Thanks for sharing your Tip, Really useful
@arun, Thanks for reminding me about removing unwanted Plug ins and CSS codes, I do have lot unwanted plug ins and Extra Codes in my style sheet. Thanks for sharing the tip.
@Simon @ryan Thanks for sharing your Successful Seo strategies that you have Implemented in you blog
I am happy that I am about to reach positive percentage in this competition…which had been my goal. Next week should see it eventuate.
Richael Neet’s last blog post… The Blogging Park – Where blogging is fun!
Wow, that’s all I can say looking at some of the figures. It’s really amazing to see some of the figures of 700% in terms of gain and even 2000 visits.
700% increase in one month !!!!!!! man that is impressive. Btw Ajith, I think you should look into what Nihar is saying. Because he has the largest increase in absolute number of traffic. At least we should be able to listen to his seo tricks.
@Nihar can you share your seo strategy?
binaryday’s last blog post… The risk with oversimplified SEO
I regret not joining in on this but, this helps me out a little. I get very very very little traffic from google, anyway im gonna start some keyword research for my blogs. They really need it
Blog for Bloggers’s last blog post… 30 Tips To Better Blogging
Folks, Samrat’s strategies has been incorprated into the posts rathe than comment. Please take a look. I encourage others (who are not in top 5) to share their strategies as well – Ajith
Well, once again the stats are amazing. I am totally impressed with Samrat and Raju. Great job guys.
Shirley’s last blog post… Can Your Website Handle A Traffic Surge?
@Raju, I think in last week 3 update. I gave my SEO strategy. Please check it.
@Ajith, What is you take on my question in the comment about?
Nihar’s last blog post… How to Merge Multiple PDF Documents for Free
Your Contest is going great !!
Abhishek’s last blog post… Aero India 2009
@Raju, right… hot keywords will always work and so will increased frequency of posting.
@Nihar, what you have achieved so far is really a significant traffic improvement! But even with the initial value being high (or four digit daily traffic) you can still go to higher levels
With real keyword research (Even off topic keywords) anything is possible!
But another point here is whether you want to spoil the goodwill of your blog by bringing in search traffic not related to your niche!
And for the final week, the range is Jan 5 – Feb 15 and hence probably some of your weak traffic issues in the beginning may be offset if you get good traffic this week.
@Kurt, I think blogs like yours, that talk about more current affairs, can really exploit Google Trends, Hot Trends and Suggest. I won’t take this route though as I write about a totally different set of topics that may not be always ‘current’. I would think that you should use top four or five keywords in Google Trends (top 10) and cross check it with Hot trends (100) for any common behaviour there and also check with Google suggest once to pick the most natural keywords.
Perhaps the experts here could help you and me out further
@Nicholas, a lot of good tips for all of us, right?
@Richael, from where you started, it’s a steady improvement…but yeah, one needs to think about other priorities and main job in life as well, right? Frankly speaking, I do not do too much of SEO but most of my search traffic (something like 80-85 visitors max from search per day) have low bounce rate. Looks like people actually read my stuff
@Rajiv, definitely these are amazing numbers! Hopefully these numbers are also resulting in building long term readership and monetization as well.
@Binary, Defenitely, we are all keen to learn from NIhar as well. Improving the daily search visits by 800 or so extra is no joke! It’s a great achievement.
@Ardit, you should have a decent percentage of search traffic to continously build your readership. This will also help to monetize your blog better.
@Shirley, yep…they are doing an amazing job!
@Abhishek, thanks buddy… Please participate next time
Thanks Ajith for sharing my views….. I’m happy to see myself in a good place for both % increase and also the absolute number… Trying hard to beat my position.. But I guess Arun, Raju and Simon are equally working hard to be in the top positions.. All d best to all the ppl here.. and special mentions to Ajith!!
TechnoSamrat’s last blog post… Download ClamWin Open Source Antivirus Program
Ajith, hopefully you repeat a contest similar in nature where I can take part more proactively. This contest has helped me to gain a traffic stat that would not have been possible with normal SEO work…even when I was not taking active part in matching the top position holders.
Richael Neet’s last blog post… The Blogging Park – Where blogging is fun!
Ajith, sorry for the double post but I am so curious that I had to ask this on an unrelated post.
How does your top commentator plugin work? All plugins I have seen till now accumulate all the comments for the month and whoever posts the highest gets top spot, and so on. However, your plugin seems to work differently. Just this morning, Nihar had 7 comments and now it is reduced to 6. The same also occurred to me when I was one of the top commentators on your blog months ago. Could you explain how it works?
Richael Neet’s last blog post… .tel Domain – the Landrush Begins!
@Samrat, thanks… I think all of you have done a great job… Even those who are beyound the top 5 as well. I mean, I have not really managed to increase my search visits by more than 20% in the last two months though my 2009 goals have a major stress on this aspect
@Richael, Well, I will try to do similar contests next year as well but would not run it in the same formati because it’s a lot of manual work for me. In fact, I had to delay some of my posts here due to this extra work. Perhaps, I will do the event in another format next year.
As for the top commentator thingie, I really want to reward people who are regular here and genuinely commenting. So I use the floating window approach… basically I display the top commenters for the past seven days and it doesn’t get reset every week or month. I guess this is a fair approach. For example, in Nihar’s case he would have made a comment exactly seven days back which went out of the seven days window this morning
My approach has the following advantages:-
- No reset and hence suddenly there is no void or empty space suddenly on a day
- Some smart people who visit only on day 1 of the month or week, comment, and disappear for rest of the month/week will not get credit
Ajith, I have published posts on only which i am aware off. List Lost Season 5. I am watching and i posted. Cricket is a big thing for me. So, i don’t think i have published something which is out of my niche.
@Nihar, you are doing exactly what is good for long term
For short term vested goals, if you try to win the search visitors ‘alone’ that may affect the reader experience of existing regular readers. Good job!
Great work everybody, and thanks for sharing your tips and secrets with us! Three over 500% now, pretty impressive stuff indeed! I’m off to the post about the final result to check out the final winners now!