going down a little

[greenoak]

oh dear....our website views seems to be going down a bit...... so many things happen at once..its hard to exactly figure out.....
#main keywords are fading from popularity...now i need to learn new keywords ...shabby is out now... i know i could look at a popular site in my field and see their keywords...i did that a few years ago but now i dont know how i did it...???anybody know how do you do that?
#our facebook is growing ....maybe they are there instead...
#im not on as many national online places as i used to be......i kind of figure a lot of that is vanity and fun, talking to kindred spirits and seeing everyones georgous blogs etc . and not about actual customers in the store...so ive pulled back my time on them...
# im pretty sure the local viewers of the site arent down....but thats jsut a guess..i. anyone from afar who comes got the info from the webpage...i still hear how great the site is from most of the new people who come...and there are lots of them...thankfully...


any ideas for me
wandering not lost!!!
thanks

[nealrm]

First, has your placement on the search engines slipped. I did a quick Goggle search for antiques in Rochester IN, and you popped up at the top. So I expect that your decline in site visitors is more to do with the economy or seasonal changes that anything permanent.

[Spider]

Stats fluctuate. There has been a tropical storm sweeping across the South, wildfires in Colorado and San Fransisco, Football season getting under way across the country and children going back to school. Not to mention some nutcase in Florida trying to start World War III. Lots of reasons to not visit an antique store this week!

[greenoak]

spider....im looking at year to year...

[KristineS]

Generally to see keywords you can just go to a website page and then click view on your browser toolbar. Somewhere on that menu will be an item called page source. Click that and it will let you see the code that makes up the page. Keywords are generally in the header code and may be labeled keywords, or may just be a long list of words separated by commas.

[billbenson]

Generally to see keywords you can just go to a website page and then click view on your browser toolbar. Somewhere on that menu will be an item called page source. Click that and it will let you see the code that makes up the page. Keywords are generally in the header code and may be labeled keywords, or may just be a long list of words separated by commas.

Well, that may be where ann got the words some time ago, but I'll have to disagree. I wouldn't recommend that as a way to find why a site or page is ranking today. If a site is well done, look at the title tag, possibly the meta description, and content for clues. Also the page text.

I guess a site does give a laundry list of meta keyword tags, it may tell you what that site thinks is important, but its not the reason that site or page is going to rank well.

[greenoak]

i wonder if it was something like alex or alexis? i used...it was a few years ago...and it told what the most popular words were on a site...i never used a toolbar....

[Harold Mansfield]

Sounds to me like you did your due diligence a while ago and haven't paid much attention to it since. That will do it. It's real easy to figure out...where was your traffic coming from a year ago? Is it still coming from those sources?
If not, you know where you need to direct your attention.

Everyday there is more and more competition for page views. It doesn't have to be an actual store, I'm sure there are hundreds of websites and blogs trying to attract "Antique" traffic and they have undoubtedly grown over the last year. You have to stay one step ahead or they will get your traffic.
SEO is constant. You are never done.

[KristineS]

Well, that may be where ann got the words some time ago, but I'll have to disagree. I wouldn't recommend that as a way to find why a site or page is ranking today. If a site is well done, look at the title tag, possibly the meta description, and content for clues. Also the page text.

I guess a site does give a laundry list of meta keyword tags, it may tell you what that site thinks is important, but its not the reason that site or page is going to rank well.

Have to agree with you on that one Bill. Didn't go far enough with my explanation. Thanks for filling in the blanks.

[greenoak]

we come up #3 on google if you put in indiana antiques....so thats not too bad......#1 under rochester is not important since we arre the only one in town......
its the other stuff i need some new key words on...and the things i sell now just dont have obvious key words...
a lot of my traffic a year ago wasnt very productive, it was thru the blogs and i dont have time to be out there so much now...im not very active in the blog world now....it ended up being mostly friendly but way far away women who wouldnt have turned into buyers.....facebook is way more productive than my blog....
i do hate to go down tho!!!!

[Harold Mansfield]

we come up #3 on google if you put in indiana antiques....so thats not too bad......#1 under rochester is not important since we arre the only one in town......
its the other stuff i need some new key words on...and the things i sell now just dont have obvious key words...
a lot of my traffic a year ago wasnt very productive, it was thru the blogs and i dont have time to be out there so much now...im not very active in the blog world now....it ended up being mostly friendly but way far away women who wouldnt have turned into buyers.....facebook is way more productive than my blog....
i do hate to go down tho!!!!

There is always going to be one source that is better than the others..and no source lasts forever. That's why you need to keep current with all of your online endeavors. Facebook is a great tool, but it is owned by Facebook. Your website is yours and you should take your success with Facebook and use it to evolve your website. At worst, you won't loose anything and will build your website traffic up. At best you will gain more ground on your website and as/if Facebook gets saturated or looses fascination with users the way My Space did, you won't be left with out any avenues to communicate with potential customers.

[greenoak]

i hear you on the facebook website thing..... a lot of it might be the customers choice tho...and probably quite new people for us that never saw our website... ........
what im trying to find out is ways to find the better keywords that i think i need.......like looking at what words other sites use...
i am going to try the toolbar idea...but i guess you are saying you dont know a place to see what a sites most successful keywords are... right?
im not sure its bad that the views are going down...IF its becausue im neglecting the blog world...
i definitely want to keep up my website...the blog not so much...altho i like it the most.... im totally benefitting from facebook but i dont quite get it or enjoy it...the blog seems so much more interesting....and the website so much more serious and important.....

[Harold Mansfield]

i wonder if it was something like alex or alexis? i used...it was a few years ago...and it told what the most popular words were on a site...i never used a toolbar....

I think you are probably talking about Alexa, and I don't find it to be very useful or accurate at all. I don't believe installing the toolbar with do anything to help you.
You are better off using Google's keyword tools.
If you really want to get serious you could use other tools like Twitter, and Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends) to find out what people are currently talking and searching about in your niche.

Don't forget that there are 2 other search engines as well.
Yahoo has webmaster tools:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/indexing/webmaster-01.html

and Bing seems to have a lot more information now to help webmasters than Microsoft has ever offered:
http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmasters/

[billbenson]

The Alexa toolbar is mostly installed by webmasters. The results will be what webmasters search for. It's of about zero value unless your market is webmasters only.