Question from reader... On SEO, Traffic And Backlinks!
1st Question: What exactly are backlinks?
My reply: I keep it short and straight to the point.
In order for your website to get to the top of the search engines, you need to get backlinks. A backlink is a link to your website from some other website.
In other words: If someone puts a link to your website from his website you have a backlink.
2nd Question: Thanks for your reply. Perhaps I can ask you another question...........I have a website: www.johnlavin.ca which I have paid someone to optimize for the past 3-4 years.
Last year I began to see favourable results (I did 10 real estate transactions off it) however this year I have had zero from it.
I think the fellow doing the optimizing has too many real estate agents on his books, would that make a difference?
My Answer to 2nd Question: 3-4 years of optimization is a lot of time. You can see results within 6 months or less, assuming you did not optimize for the keyword real estate.
May I know the keywords he optimized your website for? That way I can tell you how long it should take you to see results.
I did not understand what you said: "I think the fellow doing the optimizing has too many real estate agents on his books, would that make a difference?"
When you hire someone to do the optimization, you should get a report telling you what keyword he optimized your site for. That way you can check rankings and see if indeed he really is doing a good job or not. Having a bit of knowledge about seo will help you judge the performance of the person you hire.
So if you provide the keywords he optimized your site for, I will be able to check out any progress and many other things.
Reply to My Answer of 2nd Question: Thanks for your reply. The keywords he has optimized are as follows:
house for sale in Mississauga Ontario
listed home for sale in Mississauga
Mississauga real estate agent
Mississauga townhouse
Mississauga townhouse condo
new home Mississauga
new house in Mississauga
new Mississauga condo
resale home Mississauga
He does give me a report each month which does show I'm getting traffic. In the first year I did a couple of transactions from it and that increased in the second to 4-5, last year I did 10 transactions and I had planned to increase that this year but so far have had none at all from the site.
As far as my question: "I think the fellow doing the optimizing has too many real estate agents on his books, would that make a difference?" . He handles quite a number of real estate agents and we are all competing in the same market, he does not optimize the same keywords for all of us, so I'm guessing that the popularity of keywords changes over time, but if another of my competitors has a popular phrase wrapped up I cannot use it.
I hope that is not a confusing answer. There is so much information on SEO out there it is hard to know which is real information and which is nonsense.
My reply back: So you need to know if traffic is decreasing, increasing or approximately the same month after month. You can check through your webhost stats, if they have cpanel. Contact them to find out that.
The problem here is no sales this year compared to previous years. So either traffic decreased or else you changed something on your website and conversion decreased. Maybe you changed homepage web copy...
To understand if the one you hired is doing a good job or no, just keep record of the keywords he has to optimize your site for. And keep record of where you rank for each keyword. Then check next month, see if rankings improved, dropped or are the same.
In cpanel once again, checking out traffic stats of previous years compared to this year. That may show traffic decreased, i.e the reason sales decreased.
One thing about keywords I suggest. Check cpanel to see which one keyword is giving you the most traffic from Google. Then see where you rank for that keyword. If you are not #1 in Google for that, tell the one you hired for seo, to optimize your site for that - to put it #1. It's better than trying to rank for a lot of keywords.
Just rank the one which is the best keyword, the one which already is giving you the most traffic. Since keep in mind the first three positions in the search engine get almost all the traffic. For one of my sites, I have a ton of keywords, but my sales comes almost all from the ONE keyword that is #1. The others that are #5, #9 etc, do still provide some traffic and some sales every now and then. But the one at #1 position makes the difference.
I would also keep improving my website, maybe next bit is hiring a copywriter for better conversion.
His reply back: Thanks for your informative reply. I have checked with my web people and they do not have cpanel. Is there another way I can check this?
My reply back: You can join Google Analytics for both traffic stats and keyword stats.
http://www.google.com/analytics/
They have tutorials and everything else to get started.
Karl SultanaMy reply: I keep it short and straight to the point.
In order for your website to get to the top of the search engines, you need to get backlinks. A backlink is a link to your website from some other website.
In other words: If someone puts a link to your website from his website you have a backlink.
2nd Question: Thanks for your reply. Perhaps I can ask you another question...........I have a website: www.johnlavin.ca which I have paid someone to optimize for the past 3-4 years.
Last year I began to see favourable results (I did 10 real estate transactions off it) however this year I have had zero from it.
I think the fellow doing the optimizing has too many real estate agents on his books, would that make a difference?
My Answer to 2nd Question: 3-4 years of optimization is a lot of time. You can see results within 6 months or less, assuming you did not optimize for the keyword real estate.
May I know the keywords he optimized your website for? That way I can tell you how long it should take you to see results.
I did not understand what you said: "I think the fellow doing the optimizing has too many real estate agents on his books, would that make a difference?"
When you hire someone to do the optimization, you should get a report telling you what keyword he optimized your site for. That way you can check rankings and see if indeed he really is doing a good job or not. Having a bit of knowledge about seo will help you judge the performance of the person you hire.
So if you provide the keywords he optimized your site for, I will be able to check out any progress and many other things.
Reply to My Answer of 2nd Question: Thanks for your reply. The keywords he has optimized are as follows:
house for sale in Mississauga Ontario
listed home for sale in Mississauga
Mississauga real estate agent
Mississauga townhouse
Mississauga townhouse condo
new home Mississauga
new house in Mississauga
new Mississauga condo
resale home Mississauga
He does give me a report each month which does show I'm getting traffic. In the first year I did a couple of transactions from it and that increased in the second to 4-5, last year I did 10 transactions and I had planned to increase that this year but so far have had none at all from the site.
As far as my question: "I think the fellow doing the optimizing has too many real estate agents on his books, would that make a difference?" . He handles quite a number of real estate agents and we are all competing in the same market, he does not optimize the same keywords for all of us, so I'm guessing that the popularity of keywords changes over time, but if another of my competitors has a popular phrase wrapped up I cannot use it.
I hope that is not a confusing answer. There is so much information on SEO out there it is hard to know which is real information and which is nonsense.
My reply back: So you need to know if traffic is decreasing, increasing or approximately the same month after month. You can check through your webhost stats, if they have cpanel. Contact them to find out that.
The problem here is no sales this year compared to previous years. So either traffic decreased or else you changed something on your website and conversion decreased. Maybe you changed homepage web copy...
To understand if the one you hired is doing a good job or no, just keep record of the keywords he has to optimize your site for. And keep record of where you rank for each keyword. Then check next month, see if rankings improved, dropped or are the same.
In cpanel once again, checking out traffic stats of previous years compared to this year. That may show traffic decreased, i.e the reason sales decreased.
One thing about keywords I suggest. Check cpanel to see which one keyword is giving you the most traffic from Google. Then see where you rank for that keyword. If you are not #1 in Google for that, tell the one you hired for seo, to optimize your site for that - to put it #1. It's better than trying to rank for a lot of keywords.
Just rank the one which is the best keyword, the one which already is giving you the most traffic. Since keep in mind the first three positions in the search engine get almost all the traffic. For one of my sites, I have a ton of keywords, but my sales comes almost all from the ONE keyword that is #1. The others that are #5, #9 etc, do still provide some traffic and some sales every now and then. But the one at #1 position makes the difference.
I would also keep improving my website, maybe next bit is hiring a copywriter for better conversion.
His reply back: Thanks for your informative reply. I have checked with my web people and they do not have cpanel. Is there another way I can check this?
My reply back: You can join Google Analytics for both traffic stats and keyword stats.
http://www.google.com/analytics/
They have tutorials and everything else to get started.
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