what i have learnt from failures

[priyankeshu]

ok so i started almost a year back into the world of IM. My aim was to build blogs and get traffic from the search engines,making money from ppc.

i have spent whole year researching on what google likes and what it does not. I saw their documentaries and spend a lot of time watching the successful websites closely.


I created one technology blog. Which once i would start writing more posts would get traffic but then again the traffic would decrease. Again i will write more posts to get the traffic and traffic will build up and again the posts will be buried deep into the SERPs. I tried hard but in the end i NEVER got desired results.

I learnt
What i have discovered is that time spent on the site is one of the MOST important factors for a site to rank well. Like they mention it on Google webmaster guidelines section what matters most is USER EXPERIENCE.

So if you are like me. Trying to work hard to create more content but not getting long lasting success this might be the aspect u gotta be working on.

Good content = That keeps the visitor on your site for more time. Or lets him click away to another site.

BASICALLY if the user comes and closes your site without clicking or spending time i think it is not good and the ranking would go down.

Like i saw in the google documentary the representative said that we show a page in the search listings and then evaluate if the user gets the information on that page. If it does nt we lower down its rankings.

I THINK this is what actually sets google apart from all other search engines too.

Examples
Look at the forums, they rank so well for most competitive keywords. People spend so much time here in the forums. Even when there would be less or no content on the page.

Social bookmarking site is another great example.

Wikipedia another place when once you go there you keep on clicking on the links and spend more time on the site.

Do all wikipedia pages have backlinks? NO but because the impression is good because of the avg time spent on the site most pages rank well..


So many sites on about.com do they build backlinks to promote their site? I dont think so

START thinking about ways on how the user will spend more time on your site. Get google Analytics if you have not already done it. Check the bounce rate.


TIP
Link to related pages on your site in the starting of your articles. This will lead to user clicking and spending more time on the site.

It will definitely get you more organic search engine traffic in the long run

[ExRat]

Hi Priyankeshu,

What i have discovered is that time spent on the site is one of the MOST important factors for a site to rank well. Like they mention it on Google webmaster guidelines section what matters most is USER EXPERIENCE.

So if you are like me. Trying to work hard to create more content but not getting long lasting success this might be the aspect u gotta be working on.

Good content = That keeps the visitor on your site for more time. Or lets him click away to another site.

BASICALLY if the user comes and closes your site without clicking or spending time i think it is not good and the ranking would go down.

Like i saw in the google documentary the representative said that we show a page in the search listings and then evaluate if the user gets the information on that page. If it does nt we lower down its rankings.

I THINK this is what actually sets google apart from all other search engines too.

Bingo.

But don't shout it too loudly or you'll upset a lot of people who are happy to convince others (who don't realistically have the resources to set up a viable backlinking system) that they can successfully top the SEs with low quality content just by backlinking.

What's ironic is that you don't even have to be a genius OR conduct tests to arrive at this conclusion. You simply have to ask yourself 'what would I do if I was Google?'

It's common knowledge that in the past people have tricked the SERPS purely through backlinking. If it's common knowledge, then Google is obviously also aware and is probably pumping a large portion of it's R&D funding into sophisticating their algo. So how would you do it if you were Google?

Monitor the visitors. Use your plethora of spying applications to examine user behaviour. When none are present, just look for what they do on your SERPS pages (back button, etc.)

Why do new sites spend a short time higher up in the SERPS and then drop down and 'find their place'? Google needs to send a little traffic to see how it responds to the new site...

[broker12]

Quality content is key. Make sure that it is always original and helpful to the reader.

[ivana]

people often spend way too much time on technical part of the site, they forget that in the end people are reading those post.

[twright]

This topic about time spent on page is a key item for sure but it is one of many.. There are a ton of reasons why a page gets ranked but tips like this will help a new person "get it" . So to keep the time spent on page high you have to have good content which has been mentioned above to keep the user there..

Getting into the brain of your perspective site user.

[Rohit Shah]

Great stuff, Thanks a lot.

[SurviveUnemployment]

You noticed that too, huh?

Quality of outbound links is also very important (and helps get inbounds, too).