I just reached page 1 in Google for 2 very strong keywords/phrases. I'm also ranked #2 in MSN for one of those phrases (page 4 for the other) and doing poorly in Yahoo. Regardless, I'm excited about my results in Google, and hope to continue my climb to the top; however, I think the majority of my traffic is coming from directory submissions (when they review my site before adding the listing) and my personal constant updates to the site. FWIW, I'm using Awstats for analysis, since my Google Analytics account is only a few days old and without much data. Anyway, I've spent nothing on advertising, and wonder if that's been a mistake. My goal is to get around 500 uniques a day, and I'm starting to wonder if I've been focusing too much attention on the search engines (mainly Google) and not enough time on finding other ways to drive traffic to my site. According to Awstats, so far this month I've received 449 uniques, and like I said I want that number to be on a daily-basis. I started the month off on page 9 or so in Google, made a quick jump to page 4 about a week or so ago, and have been steadily climbing ever since; however, it doesn't seem like my traffic has been climbing along with the SERPs. Last month I had 333 uniques overall, but I've spent a lot of time submitting to directories this month and, like I said, I'm afraid that's where my traffic increase is coming from. So, am I freaking out prematurely, or are my concerns justified? Should I be focusing more on advertising? I don't have much of a budget at all, which is why I focused on other methods. Which is more important traffic-wise, SERPs or paid-advertising? I know it's a very generic question, but I feel like I've given way too much credit to SERPs as a traffic-generating tool. Again, I would like around 500 uniques a day. Thanks for any and all advice helping me achieve this goal.
Ranking in major SE is one of the best ways to get quality traffic for your site and it would be good to make 60(SERP) - 40 on SERP and advertising. And before you go for paid advertising plan first. Think about your target market and how much can you spend for it.
Sounds like you need to be in the top of the SERPs for a new keyword. That one isn't generating much traffic at all. Buy a link/ad space on a related site that's bigger than yours. That will get you some steady traffic. We spend very little to zero in advertising, but of that very little we pay $25 a month to a website to be one there pages. And we get 2000+ visits from them a month easy. Maybe it's our ad, or maybe they have a lot of traffic, but it is inexpensive and gets the word out about our site. If you are gaining and gaining in the SERPs then try for other keywords and get genuine links from other sites to help keep boosting you up. 500 uniques per day doesn't seem like too hard of a goal. Just make quality content and promote it. Sound easier than it is, but just keep pluggin' away and I'm sure you'll get it.
So maybe 10th isn't really that good, and the higher I get the better? Well, obviously, the higher rankings I get the better, but I'm saying maybe once I hit 5th, the results will be much MUCH better? I hope that makes sense. Yes, I will definitely plan. The thing is, the target market in poker-related, and since it is highly-competitive, advertising doesn't come cheap. The cheapest decent one-month 468x120 banner ad I've found so far that seems worthwhile is $400. Obscure, tiny banners in bad locations are around $200 on twoplustwo.com (a popular poker forum). I just don't have that kind of bling, which is why I focused on SEO.
The keyword is highly-targeted and correct, I believe. I wouldn't even think of competing for "online poker" or anything similar, but the specific online poker service related to my keyword (rakeback) isn't as competitive. Unfortunately, in the online poker business, advertising isn't that cheap (although I haven't searched too hard). I guess I'll do some more research tonight. That's very motivating, thank you... But when you say "promote it", you mean paid advertising as opposed to article submissions and press releases, correct? I would be more than willing to throw down $400/month if I knew it would get results, but how can you tell? These sites claim 50,000 uniques/12,000 alexa blah blah blah, but that doesn't mean their visitors will click on my ad. Also, footers and that junk seem like a waste of money as a far as generating traffic is concerned... The only benefit IMHO would be how Google interprets the link for SERPs, not for click-throughs. Is that a correct assumption? If so, I'm stuck looking for expensive banner-ad spots, where I'm still unsure if I will get results.
traffic from serps are free permenant and revelant traffic so it is always better to go for them as first option same time u have many other ways like buying links in revelant sites, forums, adwords so on try all of them if req.
Well I didn't know you were in the online poker business as that is a tough market for sure. Good luck. When I say promote it I mean get out on the web and promote it in communities, social bookmarking sites, directories, feedburner, blog comments (don't spam, but actually provide good info), etc. I like to Digg some of my posts, and add them to multiple social bookmarking sites, plus find places like Zimbio.com and Wikis to add them. The more places you are on the net with links coming into your site the easier people can find you and blog/link to you. Of course article submissions and press releases are good as well. If you can afford advertising, then I'd try some AdWords or other PPC, but keep it well within budget at first and see what the best ROI is, then go big with the best you got. It is hard to tell if buying links is going to be worth it, so buy one month and find out. I like the free approach of submitting to communities/bookmarking/other blogs. As an example we made a blog post about creating your own costume, and then I submitted it to Make:blog who gets lots of traffic and they featured it and it spread like wild fire from there with lots of people blogging about that one post. Then more people came and started blogging/linking to other posts of ours and we jumped in traffic and SERPS because of it.