I’ll be honest, this post is somewhat of a “boast”. But since “boast” rhymes with “Yoast”, I think it’s allowed. Recently we did a website review for “How do you say that Word?“. The review contained instructions to make a section of the site accessible to spiders. Results? A 10x increase of her website traffic.
The Site & The Problem
The site has a very simple concept: it explains how to pronounce certain words in several languages. When the site hadn’t been optimized yet, most of the traffic was for the term “how do you say” or “how do you say that word” and for some specific pages. Those specific pages had been linked to by other websites.
You see, this site’s issue was quite simple: there was no way one could get to a specific page without searching for it. So, in our review we proposed several methods of making a browsable archive, one that a search engine could go to and find all the pages in it. They did and the solution worked wonders, now, if you search for “How do you say fruits de mer”, you’re taken right to the best page for it: “how to say fruits de mer”.
The Analytics
What that means website traffic wise? Well, this, and we’re only just getting started, as the site was updated on Jan 19th:
Website Traffic Update
After publication of this post Marie-Ora, who owns the website, sent me an updated screenshot of the stats:
Conclusion
Is there stuff on your site that is impossible to reach for search engines? Now is as good as time as any to fix that. Is your website not getting the traffic you’re hoping for? Maybe we can help with a review!
Awesome to see how big of an impact a small changes has. Got to love SEO.
One suggestion for the Word Archive page. I would like to search by letter also. So I can quickly see all letters starting with ‘M’ instead of having to browse by page. I couldn’t find a sitemap with every word either, maybe an idea?
Well you can boast, and let me tell you traffic has gone up even more since the 9th. Hitting over 500 views a day at present. I said it when I received your SEO report, before we even got to implementation – this was seriously the best investment I ever made in my website. I cannot thank you enough, Joost – you gave me everything I needed and more to make my website visible. And I know the results will continue to improve. Martijn -thanks for your comment – will look into it at once!
Thanks for the updated stats Marie-Ora, added them to the post!
You are welcome. I’ve spoken to the dev (Niraj from WordPressboys.com) who implemented your review advice when he redid my site, and he is looking into implementing Martijn’s suggestion asap. We seek constant improvement :)
I should point out that the only thing that changed on the site to improve traffic is your SEO advice and a decent programmer to implement it. We moved over all the old material lying under cobwebs because no search engine could find it, and added nothing new content-wise. When this iteration of the site was released, I was busy on another project and have barely touched it except for the past few days. No Google advertising or promotion of any kind. Obviously I had a lot of good content, but it was completely invisible on the web. I hope that puts the SEO advantage into perspective for those who are uncertain about it.
Hi Marie,
Good work on SEO. Maybe it’s usefull to know that your word archive is unavailable right now:
http://www.howdoyousaythatword.com/word-archive/
I get an error every time I try to open the page.
Maybe this is only temporary, I don’t know.
Best regards, Anton
Thanks Anton – there was a glitch – appreciate you takeing the time to let me know!
Wouldn’t an XML sitemap for posts serve the same purpose as the archive page?
No. They don’t create links and while they’re internal links only, from such an archive page, those spread pagerank, needed for a page to be indexed, a link in an XML sitemap does not.
So is it simply that the pages did not have enough value (page rank) to get indexed by the search engines – rather than the fact that the search engines did not know they existed?
I have a lot of pages indexed in google but practically none in bing – would this likely be a similar problem? Ie do you need more connecting links in some search engines than others?
A great story to be sure but do you have data on pages indexed before and after the solution was implemented? Also what does the organic only traffic look like before and after?
These stats can paint a better picture of what increasing your crawlable pages can do to your natural search traffic. Without this filtering, you still are including any potential boost from other sources not related to this restructuring.
(BTW I have no doubt that the crawling fix was the force behind this improvement)
Andy – this is ALL organic only traffic. I’ve never advertised the site, and I’ve barely promoted it. The prior stats you see are very representative of what was coming in. When I started the idea, it was with zero tech knowledge – really just a passion for my subject matter, and a side-project. It took a while to realise that I needed to do more than write great material and upload it :)
It was only when I started to read up on SEO and ask questions that I realised that despite charging plenty, the previous dev and SEO ‘expert’ actually did not know what they were doing. Lots of research got me round to Yoast.com – I started reading it and realised my SEO was appalling – took action.
That is great Marie! You sure do have a lot of content! Quickly I figure I would mention that when I clicked on YOUR NAME here, your URL shows like this: http://http//www.howdoyou saythatword.com/ . Other then that continued success..
“Bryan, Thanks for checking. Can you please tell me which page and where exactly you got this dead link.”
Ahahahahah – I see what happened here. Blonde and
tech-challenged. I swear I don’t make it through a single day without making at least one mortifying error on the net. so public, so permanent :)
Well done Yoast, and a nice and fun site that is.
Since Marie-Ora writes in her testimonial that you advice her on all aspects of her site, it may be an idea to tell her to consider changing the habit of having links open in a new window. I ended up with ten tabs open learning me how to pronounce the names of Champangnes, and well over a twenty tabs with examples of food pronounciation.
cheers
Actually Andre, you make a VERY valid point. When I asked users to try the site with and without the additional windows opening (and it was a very small sample, I grant you), they all wanted additional windows to open, so they could go back and reference the original post without hitting the back button. I am really in two minds about this, and I appreciate you raising the point. Any one else think I should change this?
Marie, it is generally considered bad practice. People know how to use the back button, or they will use a link that is on the page they just arrived at. If visitors want to open a link in a new tab, they can easily do that themselves. Also, keep in mind that all your links are internal links, so visitors won’t leave your site anyhow.
In this case (your site) it is particularly annoying, since you have lists of things you may like to know the pronunciation of. Having ten windows/tabs open just because you listen to all ten brands of champagne is not nice.
I am not sure if I am allowed to post lots of links here, just Google for:
open link in new window bad practice
to read more about it.
Andre – you are right – been reading up on it. Thank-you so much for pointing this out. Will be changing it ASAP. If you have any other thoughts, don’t hesitate to let me know!
Great stuff, I though I knew a lot about SEO, this post alone has made me realise I don’t. I think I’ll be getting a site review too.
Marie-Ora, have you considered making a mobile app? Your content is very useful and would be an excellent reference tool for mobile devices. And potentially a lot more profitable for you.
Eric and Sander – thanks for you advice – definitely looking into that next!!!!
Congrats to both Joost and his client, Marie-Ora for making the right call to get professional help, which paid off big time apparently.
Very nice work again Joost, seems you spotted the problem and addressed it effectively…
As Eric states, a mobile app will do wonders as well, since that’s what most people have with them when they’re travelling abroad and wondering how to pronounce certain sentences.
Cheers and thanks again for tip Joost.
Hi Joost,
First of all congratulations for your magnificent work. Your tools and advises are essential in my usual reads. Returning to the main subject, don’t you think that we can add duplicated content with a browsable archive page?
So, what do you think about this? Should we concern with it?
I sended i think 2 month ago an email with information, via this website, and never got an answer….. Via the contact form on top right..
Yoast – on the archive paged pages, I see that they’re using your plugin and that the canonical (even on subpages), points to the page 1. How do you do that with your plugin? I’ve specific the canonical URL in the category area (where you have the added SEO plugin fields), but page 2 shows the canconical of page 2, and so on. Is there another area to do this or was this custom? Thanks.
Why do I do that? Sorry, I know, I know – Joost…
Thanks in advance
- Mawrke
I meant that I know your name isn’t Yoast, but would still love to know how you did that canonical
Tried to add a word (crotchet) to your site, Marie-Ora, and got an error: Failed to send your message. Please try later or contact the administrator by another method.
Thanks Tim, looking into it – you can always email me. Crotchet added btw :)
I think I’m in a need of a review, I’m sure there are so many tricks I can implement on my websites to get content more visible to search engines so I can get more people to see it.
I’m a neophyte all of this is daunting and scary.
Hi Joost, i’ve been following your articles with interest for quite some time now, some of it i can understand, a lot of it is like learning a new language! SEO is a bit of pandoras box for me, and my site is pretty messy with it, to the extent i’m sure i’m being penalised by google (just out of sheer ignorance). I think i need a review, what is the proceedure to start down that path?
Hi Joost,
sorry this is offtopic, but could you write an article how you managed to get Google to recognize your categories? Within Google I see your site like this:
yoast.com › WordPress Plugins
on my sites this would look like
site.com/url-to-post.html
.. what’s the trick? I really want to know that because it would help my visitors.
Thank you
Oliver
What plugin is being used for the at a glance analytics in the dashboard?
He is using jetpack plugin :)
Much appreciated Arafin – thank you.
I hope she is making some good Adsense money from this. I see you used a very detailed category and location navigation. And a great word archive! I’m guessing the word archive is from the past searches. Brilliant.
Yoast, I posted here a couple of days ago and you didn’t put in the post.. Sometimes things work out for a reason! Here it goes.. I read this,” by Joost de Valk on 15 February, 2012 at 17:34.. I was confused and got mad that I wasn’t getting seo… So, I went through your training that you have on your blog and did what you said. MY Traffic went up 300% or plus in a matter of two days… I wanted to give you a testimony and say, Yoast stuff works… Thanks Rob Bennett
Although this is impressive how did it affect the conversion?
I mean more visistors is nice and obviously will always increase conversion somewhat but did it REALLY make a BIG difference?
thnx t u all ur post will be of great help to me
Sometimes it is easy… other times it’s real pain in the derriere! But that’s the beauty and challenge of seo.