As for the month of April, we had a total of 849 visitors. It breaks down in to the following:

Our Top Five Sources for website traffic for the month of March were:

1. Direct – 289
2. Google – 147
3. Yahoo – 79
4. Cin.org – 49
5. xt3.com – 30

The top five keywords individuals used in search engines to find our website were:

1. Prayers to End Abortion – 59
2. Prayers to end abortion – 28
3. The Great Prayer Project – 25
4. Abortion Facts – 16
5. Prolife Prayer – 10

We can see that we have seen a lost when it comes to direct traffic and traffic from referral websites. We did see an increase in the number of visitors from search engines, especially Yahoo. I do feel that the main reason for the drop in the direct traffic has to do with the little bit of contact I have had with other pro-life website’s webmasters. I have plans to contact hopefully 50 other pro-life websites this month and if things go well, we should see up to five new links to The Great Prayer Project website.

We did have a decent amount of unique visitors to our website, a total of 506 for the month of April. That was a drop of roughly 400 unique visitors, but I do think that was expected after the huge push we made for the opening days of this project.

We had a total of 5,142 pages viewed with an average of 6.06 pages viewed by each visitor to the website. Each visitor spent on average 3 minutes and 45 seconds on the website. Over fifty percent of the visitors to the website were new to the site.

I am setting a goal of having 1000 visitors to the website in the month of May. This would roughly be an increase of 150 visitors over April. I believe this goal can and will be met.

If you have any questions on this project or increase website traffic to your website in general, feel free to leave a comment. I or another reader will do our best to answer any questions you may have. Remember, just like when you rented a VHS tape, you were reminded to “Be Kind, Rewind”. On this blog, I have a similar model, “Be Kind, Share Your Knowledge”. Thanks for reading.

About five months ago a friend of mine approached me with an interesting idea for a website. The website goal was to unite individuals in one voice, in one prayer, a prayer to end abortion. His idea was to set up time slots, with each time slot lasting 20 minutes. That would make 72 time slots a day and for the entire year a total of 26,280. Realizing it was going to be no easy feat to find enough individuals to fill that many time slots, I figure this was going to be a project that would take my SEO skills to the max.

The Great Prayer Project – End Abortion (this is what we decided to refer to this project as) officially started March 25, 2010. The project started off strong, with the first two and half days completely filled with individuals praying for an end to abortion. Since then, things have slowed down. I know I still have a great deal of work to increase the amount of traffic to our website and have the rest of the time slots filled, but as you will see below, I have been able to put our website in a great position to do just that.

Here is how I was able to get this website from having a Google Page Rank of 1 in January to a Page Rank of a 4 at the start of April (I checked our Google Page Rank on April 3rd, 2010). I do believe at the rate we are going, our website will have a Google Page Rank of a 5 by the end of May. This would roughly equate to increasing our page ranking by 1 each month that we have had the full website up and running (January 1st, 2010).

First, I want to give some statistics for the website.

As you can see, if we compare the number of total visitors from January (515) to the number of total visitors from March (1362), we have had an increase of 264%. That is a very impress increase within this short of a time period. Unique visitors for those months were 358 and 961 respectively, an increase of 268%.

Our website traffic breaks down like this:

Our Top Five Sources for website traffic for the month of March were:

1. Direct – 525
2. Google – 165
3. Facebook – 106
4. Cin.org – 49
5. xt3.com – 30

The top five keywords individuals used in search engines to find our website were:

1. Prayers to End Abortion – 59
2. The Great Prayer Project – 17
3. Abortion Prayer – 11
4. Luke 18 – 8
5. Great Prayer Project – 6

Now that I have shown you what I feel are the most important statistics from an SEO standpoint, I’m going to share with you how I have been able to increase total visitor traffic to our website by 264% and saw an increase of our Google Page Ranking from a 1 to a 4 in that short of a time period.

Understanding the importance of having other websites linking to ours, I started a campaign to find other sites that were focused on two things, those being Pro-Life and/or Christianity. The reason I focused just on websites that about these two topics was simply the target audience of our website would be Pro-Life Christians. Asking a website that was focused on providing resources for video games was not a good match to partner with in order to increase the traffic to our website.

I actually started this campaign by exchanging links. I did not focus on major pro-life or Christianity websites because in January, we still had two months until the start date for praying. Plus these websites most likely would not have seen a benefit to exchanging links with us because we had low traffic to our website (in December we had a total of 186 people visit our website). The reason we were able to have that number of visitors was because while I was developing the website (pre launch of our fully functional website), I did manage to find several websites to place links to our site on. Starting in January, I started focusing my efforts on lower traffic websites that were in my focus group. These Pro-Life and Christianity websites I figured would be more likely to exchange links with us. I have found this method has been successful for this project and was able to help to increase our Google Page Ranking and website traffic. With these numbers increased, we now have more options on how we can market our website and mention these numbers when we contact other websites that have higher Page Ranking and traffic to their site.

I have found that when I have contacted other websites owners or individuals running these websites, I usually heard back from about 5% of them. This may seem like a low number, but after looking at the result of increase our website traffic by 264%, you can see that this effort does pay off. The important thing to remember is the website you ask to exchange links with should be focused a similar topic as your site. Also remember that you do not want your link page to have too many links on it. I have read in several articles related to this topic that you should have no more than 100 links on you’re a web page, this includes any internal links (such as to your home page). I try not to exceed 70 links on any page that I manage.

Another technique I have used was including in the emails I sent out asking to link to our website is asking for that individual to also mention us on Facebook, Twitter, and/or a blog they write (I know just ask that a website links to ours, I do not ask to exchange links). You will find that not all website exchange links, but if the individual that runs that website has a Facebook, Twitter, or a blog (most people that run a website has at least one of these) and like what you provide on your website, they will mention your site on one of these three outlets. If you noticed, Facebook is number 3 on the websites that provides traffic to our website. Many of these visitors come from others mentioning us on Facebook, not from our Facebook page. Twitter should be on that list at number 4, but because of some techniques I use with Twitter (see my Making the Most of Twitter) the data collected from visitors from Twitter show up as two or three referring sites. I prefer to keep them separate due to being able to better determine how I can better use these tools to increase traffic from Twitter.

A third technique has been to use a monthly newsletter to email subscribers about what is happening on our website. I have found that after we send out a newsletter, nearly 50% of those on our mailing list visit our website within 24 hours of receiving that email. Our mailing has been growing by nearly 50 people a month and I would predict that ratio would say better much the same as more people sign up to receive our newsletter.

Now that I have gone over some of the techniques I have used to increase this website traffic by 264%, I would like to share with you other techniques I will be using in the upcoming months to keep the number of total visitors to our website increasing.

• Modify Titles – Right now every web page includes the words “The Great Prayer Project” somewhere in it. I am going to remove this, except on the homepage. The remaining web pages will have a title that just relates to what is on that page. I will be looking at keywords for each of these pages and creating web page titles that include those keywords. (Find more about keywords on my Five Simple Free SEO Tips page)
• Change the wording on our promote page that provides individuals with the code to link to our website. Right now the anchor keywords I have set up are “The Great Prayer Project – End Abortion”. I will be changing it to “Pro-Life Prayer Movement – The Great Prayer Project”. The reason for this is I want to focus on the keywords Pro-Life and Prayer. Right now we do not rank in either of these. I feel these are the two most important keywords that we need to focus on to attract the type of visitors that will join in the prayer.
• I am planning on writing several articles for a few online magazines on the topic of prolife and why it is important to pray. I will include a link to The Great Prayer Project website within each of these articles and use anchor text in those links that I feel will benefit our website within the search engines.
• I am also planning on asking Pro-Life bloggers to write about our website. I will continue asking other website owners that are prolife and/or Christian focused to link to our website.
• I am hoping by the end of this week to have a Spanish version of the website complete. A very kind lady from Spain is working on translating the entire website into Spanish. This will allow our website to reach a much greater audience around the world.

As you can see, the number of visitors to this website has increased considerably within the last few months. If I can continue to increase the website traffic at the rate it has been, we will be able to fill the remaining time slots and how we have improved on the keywords I have mentioned above.

I do understand that the website that I am focusing on increasing the traffic too is about joining in a prayer, but you can easily use these techniques in other ways to help increase your website traffic for a e-commerce website, a business website or just your own personal site.

I am planning on writing about the progress of this website ever months on this blog, so please check back every month to find out how the progress has been going. If you have any ideas or would like to help in increasing our search results with the search engines, please leave a comment below. It’s not far for others who read this to be left out on the techniques used to increase our traffic to this website. Just like when you rented a VHS tape, you were reminded to “Be Kind, Rewind”. On this blog, I have a similar model, “Be Kind, Share”. Thanks for reading.

I personally feel the best way to leap ahead of one’s competition is to first figure out what your competition is doing better than you are. How are they marketing their website more effectively? Where are their customers coming from? Who is your competition targeting demographic ways? If you don’t know what your competition is up to or who they are marketing to that may be a different demographic than you are, you are most likely missing out on sales.

I am going to assume you have an idea of who your competitions are. If you do not know who you are competing against, I would first suggest starting with that before you read any further.

• Tip #1 – Find Everywhere Your Competition is Online. Are their websites your competition has a link back to their website where you do not have one? A great tool to find all the websites your competition is on is Yahoo Search Explorer. This site allows you to enter a URL and find all websites that URL is on. Searching through the results may take some time if Yahoo Search Explorer returns a large number of results, but it’s worth taking the time to look over them. Once you have a list of website you feel you should be on as well, either contact the website owner and see if they will place a link on their site to your business website or submit your website listing if find that website has a way to submit your URL to them (most the time these are online directories that may target a certain demographics).
• Tip #2 – Are they using social networking? Is your competition on Facebook, Twitter or MySpace. If so, see who they are friends with and what they are talking about on these networks. Most businesses do not put their profiles private, so you can search their social networking profiles and discover what they’re up too as well as how they are connecting with current and new customers. If your competition isn’t using social networking to help attract new customers, this would be a great way for you to jump ahead of them in this area, allowing you to connect to hundreds to millions of people who are currently using social networking websites. If they are using social networking website, study what they are doing and figure out a way to do it better. Maybe it’s offering 10% off a purchase if they mention they follow you on Twitter while your competition is only offering 5% off.
• Tip #3 – Discover who your competition visitors are. This will not work for every one of your competition websites, but you may find that one or two of them use a service by Quantcast. Quantcast allows websites owners to keep track of their website statistics. You won’t be able to see all the data collected by Quantcast about your competition website, but you can find some valuable information, such as male/female ratio of visitors, age range, and income level. All things that you can use to develop a more effective marketing campaign and website.

It is important in today’s market to know who your competition is and how they are using the internet to make sales. Knowing what your competition is up to will give you an advantage allowing you to use that knowledge to make changes to your website and marketing campaign to leap ahead of them.

• Tip #1 – Know Your Keywords. Understand what Google, Yahoo, and Bing consider are your keywords is very important. You may have one idea of what your keywords should be, while Google has a completely different set of keywords it is identifying your website with. The best way to discover what Google sees as your keywords is to check with Google. You can do so by using Google Adwords Keyword Tool. This will allow you to enter your URL and Google will return with the keywords Google sees your website being about. If these keywords are not in line with what you believe they should be or they are not getting the results you figure they should be, you may want to consider changing some of your content on your website. This tool from Google will also show you the monthly volume for most keywords, so you can get a better idea of what keywords should be used to optimize your website to help improve your website results within the search engines.
• Tip #2 – Find Your Ranking. Do you know where your website ranks when an individual searches Google or Bing for a certain keyword? You should know this. Once you know if and where your website is ranked, you can develop a plan on how to improve your ranking if you do not appear in a high spot. I like to use a website called Ranking Check. You are able to see where your website ranks on Google, Yahoo, and Bing (listed as MSN). This website allows you to enter three keyword phrases and compare your ranking on these three search engines. Consider using Google Adwords Keyword Tool (Tip #1) to help you discover keyword phrases related to your website.
• Tip #3 – Link To Me. Having other website linking to your website will help improve your search engine results. If your business is part of the local Chamber of Commerce, see if they will provide a link to your website. You should also consider asking any trade or other organizations your business is part of. If you are a distributor for a certain brand, ask them to link to your website. The more quality links you have coming to your website, the more Google, Yahoo and Bing will consider your website to be an authority. Remember when you are asking to exchange links with another website to make use of keywords. What is meant by this is say your company name is “Tom’s Repair Shop” and you repair televisions. When asking other websites to link to yours, ask them to use “Tom’s Repair Shop – TV Repairs”. When search engines read that link, they will see that Tom repair TVs, helping in his search engine results for TV repairs. Plus people reading that link will have a better idea of what Tom does and are more likely to click on his link if they need their TV fixed versus having to guess what Tom repairs.
• Tip #4 – Click Me, Click Me. Once you have discovered where you are ranked with certain keywords, find yourself using those keywords. Once you have found your website, click on it. The top three search engines take into account what website people click on for each search people conduct. The search engines take in consideration that website people are actually visiting to be of more of an authority of that keyword (phrase) then website they are skipped over. Once you have found the search engine result page your website is listed on, email that URL to your family, friends and even customers. Ask them to click on your website.
• Tip #5 – I’m Local, Are You? Is your business listed on the local sections on Google, Yahoo, and Bing? If so, is your website URL listed there? If you answer no to either of these questions, you need to take a minute and go to each of the three major search engines and get your business listed there. If your business and website are already listed there, ask your customers to write a review for you. Visit my Google Local Listing and Yahoo Local Listing. If I designed a website for you, feel free to give me a review there (cheap plug for helping to improve my ranking).

I hope you find these five simple and free SEO tips useful. Improving your search engine results will only help your business website presence in the long run. You should be checking your ranking often to make sure you haven’t spilled from a position you were happy with.

If you have any other simple and free tips, feel free to leave a comment below so they can be shared with anyone viewing this page. Thanks.