In yesterday's Daily Nugget I explained what steps to take to boost ranking for specific keywords based on their current ranking as reported in your Google Webmaster Tools account. Several of my suggestions included the need to write stories or blog posts.Over time, Google Analytics will report every time visitors read your blog, and you will be able to track when those blog posts brought visitors to your site. When you spend a lot of time building your blog, or paying someone to do it for you, these numbers are very rewarding to see.
If you've been writing your blog on your own you might find it more rewarding to look at the keywords and impressions that your blog posts are attracting. This report is inside your Google Webmaster Tools account. Go to Traffic > Search Queries, then click the "Top Pages" tab at the top of the report.
This Top Pages Report will show you the pages from your website that attract the most impressions and clicks. You might see black arrowheads to the left of some of the pages. Clicking those arrowheads will expand a subsection of all the keywords that matched to that particular page.
For example, your home page will probably show keyword matches for your store name, for your town name, and for common jewelry phrases like "jewelry store."
This sublist of keywords will also help you understand how Google matches permutations and related phrases to a particular page. For example, a blog page about "Halo Engagement Rings" might have matches to these phrases:
* engagement rings
* halo rings
* diamond halo rings
* princess crown ring
* crown engagement ring
Sometimes these phrases directly match words on your page, and sometimes you will find that Google took a very creative approach to matching. Spending time reviewing this information will help you understand how the Google search algorithm works.
This page report comes in handy if you are paying someone else to build content on your website or write blog entries for you. Using this report you can look for the pages those blog entries they wrote, and which keyword impressions they results in. There's no denying the results seen here, so make sure you have a conversation with your SEO company if you don't like the results. They might need to change their content writing or blogging strategy.
What I didn't mention yet is what to do if you see a gross mismatch of a keyword to a page. There will be times when obscure phrases might trigger impressions for your website page.
If you consistently see this obscure matching month after month then you should consider rewriting the page to prevent that matching. There's no need to keep attracting the wrong type of visitor to your website because it will result in higher bounce rates.
