This is the third and last part about improving search engine traffic using Google Webmaster Tools. In the last post we talked about submitting sitemaps to inform Google about the structure of your website. Now let’s see how we can use the Google Tools to further improve the ranking of our blog in the search results.

As you may know, search engines use many different variables to determine a website’s ranking in the search results - one of these variables is the keyword density. A website that contains a certain keyword in a title or multiple times in the content is considered to be a more relevant search result for this keyword than a website containing the keyword only once. So if we keep an eye on the keywords we use in our blog posts, we can affect the search results we get.

I assume you already checked out all the pages listed in the main menu of your Webmaster Tools Account. The one we are interested in now is called “Top Search Queries” and can be found in the “Statistics” menu. This page shows you the average position of your website in Google’s search results for the 20 most popular keywords. As an example: if you run a website about cars, this list tells you if and at what position your page gets listed for the keyword “Audi TT”.

So how can you use this list to improve your search results? There are many different keyword optimization philosophies and -strategies floating around the net, some more valuable than others. Whatever strategy you use, the Top Search Queries list is your instrument to track the success of your efforts.

By the way, my strategy is rather simple: I don’t care too much about the keyword density in a certain post. If I want to get a higher ranking for a certain keyword, I just blog more about this topic

My last post was a short introduction of Google Webmaster Tools. I recommend you read that post before we go into the details.

Now how can you use the Webmaster Tools to improve search engine rankings? As I mentioned in the last post, the first step is to fix the errors Google reports. You want to make sure the crawler can easily access your blog. If Google doesn’t report any errors, it’s time to tell them a bit more about your blog. The more Google knows about your blog, the better search results you will get.

For example, you want to make sure they know every single subpage of your website / blog. Most search engines index websites by following links. This means a website (or a subpage) which doesn’t receive that many links may not get indexed at all, simply because the search engines can’t find it.

The easiest way to address this problem is to submit a sitemap to the search engines. A sitemap is basically a list of all the subpages that belong to your website. In the Webmaster Tools menu, you’ll find an entry called “XML-Sitemaps”. This page tells you when Google received your last sitemap, whether it contained any errors and how many URLs of your sitemap have been indexed. Don’t expect Google to index every single subpage the same day you submit your sitemap. They take their time, and there’s nothing we can do to change this. We can’t tell them what or how fast to crawl, but we can give them a broad hint using sitemaps

I’m pretty sure most of you have heard about Google Analytics, a very powerful tracking tool. I’ve written a post about how to implement Analytics in a WordPress blog some time ago. However, only very few people seem to know about another very powerful tool Google gives us for free: Google Webmaster Tools. While Analytics allows us to track our visitors, the Webmaster Tools give us some information how the Google bot sees our webiste or blog.

Once you logged in using your Google account, the first thing to do is to claim your site. Simply type in the url of your blog, and then choose one of two options to verify that you’re the owner. For bloggers, I recommend to use the “upload” option for two reasons: You don’t have to edit your theme’s source code, and you don’t have to do it again every time you change your theme

After authenticating yourself, click on the newly added url in the dashboard. You will find an overview with some very important information. The first line tells you the last time the Google bot accessed your front page and how many of your subpages have been indexed. The lower part of the table gives you a list of errors Google encountered while crawling your site. Obviously you won’t get any good search results when Google can’t index your website, so if Google reports errors, your first step should be to fix those errors and make sure the Google bot can access and index your blog without any problems.

In my next post I will explain how to fine-tune your blog to improve your search results using the Google Webmaster Tools. However, while playing around with these tools, you’ll notice they mention sitemaps a couple of times. If you haven’t submitted any sitemaps yet, you should read this post about how to submit sitemaps automatically from your blog.

In yesterday’s review of PerformancingAds I mentioned that I noticed some changes taking place in the ad exchange system. So I logged in to my account today to see if I could find something new - and I actually could find something new!

How the ad exchange system works

My exchange credit balance went down to 1 (from 25,300 yesterday). When I clicked on the “Advertiser” tab I found out why: My exchange ad has been booked on more than 35 different blogs! So these exchange ads don’t just get displayed randomly, but they get booked. Every time somebody else’s exchange ad gets displayed on your blog, it shows up as a booking in your account. The bookings of your own exchange ads get listed in the “Advertiser” section in your account. This allows you to check out the selected blogs and lets you even unbook your ad from unwanted blogs.

Display your own ads on your blog

If your ad section is not sold out, PerformancingAds books exchange ads into your ad section. If no exchange ads get booked into your region, your own ads get displayed instead. So payed bookings have the highest priority, followed by exchange bookings. You can define the ads which get displayed if no others are available in the advertiser section. Simply navigate to the “Advertisers” tab and click “Create a  new advertisement”.

Check out PerformancingAds

(And don’t forget to try your luck with my contest )

PerformancingAds is the ad network which serves the 125×125 ad buttons you can see on the right. I joined this network approximately two weeks after it opened its doors to the public - now, one month later, it’s time for a review.

PerformancingAds is free to join and the registration process is simple. As a publisher, you define an ad region on your blog and choose the number of ads you want to display. You can define multiple regions and set a different price for every one. PerformancingAds then tries to sell these regions to advertisers.

The ad exchange system

As a publisher you can create so-called exchange ads. As long as a region on a blog is not completely sold out, exchange ads of other blogs get displayed. So if you have some free space on your ad region, PerformancingAds displays exchange ads of another blog in your region. For every impression you generate, you earn credits which are then converted into impressions of your own exchange ad on other people’s blogs.

Because this is a very young ad network, a couple of things are still in its infancy. One of these things is the documentation of this exchange system. For example, in my account it says

Your exchange current credit balance is 25,300.

Apart from the grammar mistake, this sounds pretty cool - but honestly I have no idea what this means How many credits do I earn per impression? How many credits do I spend for every impression of my own exchange ad? Today I noticed that they made some changes in the exchange system - I think we should expect to see some improvement in the next couple of days. In this context I’d like to mention that it would be nice to have a news page or a company blog informing users of such changes.

Check out PerformancingAds

The affiliate system

In contrast to this somewhat mysterious exchange system, the affiliate system is very clear: You earn 10$ for every active user you refer - active means that

• a publisher displays ads for at least one month
• an advertiser buys an ad

Additionally, you earn a recurring 5% of all advertiser ad buys - for life.

My results

So far I generated 25,300 exchange credits (what ever this means ). I also referred a bunch of new users so I expect to get an affiliate payment soon. Because the booking-reports of my ad region is more confusing than informative, I have no idea how many bookings I had - I don’t even know if I had any at all.

Things to improve

• Documentation - some parts are well documented, other parts (such as the exchange system) need a better documentation
• Reports - the booking report is not really informative
• Communication of changes - would be nice to know what’s going on

Conclusion

A promising young network which has to overcome some teething problems. I will certainly stick with it to find out how it develops. If you are interested in selling ads or at least get some traffic from the exchange ad system, you should check out PerformancingAds. Let me know what you think about it.

Check out PerformancingAds

(And don’t forget to try your luck with my contest )