Why is my lens not getting traffic? The answer may be in the Keywords

Recently, during a discussion on Facebook, two Squidoo Members expressed their frustration about not being able to get traffic to some of their lenses. So I suggested they give me the link to one lens each that I would look at and see if I could fathom out what the problem was. I had no idea of the topics, but I did suspect that the problem could be with the keywords.

In this post I will discuss a lens by Othercat and in my next post we will look at a lens by Tokyonights7 – otherwise known as Heather.

KEYWORDS CASE STUDY 1: Treatments for BPD

Ranked 36,008 overall my first thought was that the lens is not doing that badly. Well established in Tier 3, according to Squidaholic the page received 13 visits this week. So let’s look at what I believe makes for good SEO and see if we can change anything to improve Othercat’s chances of increasing traffic and lensrank.

My SEO methods are simple:

1) Keyword research even before I snag the Squidoo URL

2) Write unique, useful content, using those keywords

3) Publish and backlink

CHECKING THE KEYWORDS
I headed over to the free Google Keyword Research Tool and looked at the keywords I think Othercat is using: treatments for BPD, treatment borderline personality disorder, BPD and borderline personality disorder.

Below is a screenshots of the results.

At the top of the screenshot you can see the four phrases I checked out. Underneath are suggestions for other keywords.

At first it looks like Othercat may have hit upon some very strong keywords. Monthly search volume of 550,000 for borderline personality disorder looks like it could be a very strong keyword. It’s the same for bpd, but we have to remember that we are looking for low competition in addition to High Search Volume, so we need to continue the research. Time spent on proper analysis now can save much fretting in the future!

Note: Ignore the Competition Column in the Keyword results – this is not the Competition we are looking for and relates to people paying for Adwords.

So I exported the results into an Excel Spreadsheet, because it helps me to analyse the results and I am not very good at remembering a series of figures.

Then I set about checking the competition by simply entering each Keyphrase into a Google Search Box, enclosed in ” ” – this way you will only pull up the number of pages that are competing for that exact phrase.

And this is what I found

And, I am sorry, but it is not looking good.

Although the phrases bpd and borderline personality disorder have high search volume, there’s also a lot of competiton and I am already thinking that this is why the traffic is not as high as Othercat is hoping it will be.

You see that figure in the Ratio column that I have added to the spreadsheet? That is the number of competing pages divided by the number of searches. The ratio needs to be as low as possible and many of my high performing Squidoo Lenses have keywords with ratios less than one.

The competition for treatments for bpd is lower but then so is the number of searches.

MY SUGGESTIONS TO IMPROVE THE KEYWORDS

If a lens is already getting traffic, then I am always loathe to delete anything, because the danger is that, in the short term, even if you feel you are making improvements, you could push the lens down. You may just delete the phrases that the Google Spiders are finding and then lose what little traffic you have.

So when I do an overhaul on a lens, unless it is languishing below 100,000 lensrank, I always look at ADDING content and keywords and leaving well alone.

To find better performing keywords, I will delve deeper into the list of suggested keywords that the Google Keyword Tool gives me. For Othercat, I selected some of the other keywords and exported them to my spreadsheet. I then checked the competition, worked out the Ratio and then re-ordered the keywords by the lowest Ratio.

You can see the results and I have highlighted the original keywords in red in the screenshot below.

The Spreadsheet shows seven keywords that may well be more effective at getting traffic than borderline personality disorder, so my first suggestion to Othercat is that she adds these keywords to the lens in the content and where possible in module headings too.

But also look at the keyword with the greatest potential for traffic: what is borderline personality disorder. Yes, I know the lens is about the treatment of this disorder but early on in the lens, perhaps expand the content that tells readers more about what it is?

Now, I am no BPD expert but looking at those keywords, Othercat may like to look at the structure and the content of the lens. Without having to do a complete rewrite, she could work in those top keywords and then be sure is is writing about exactly what people are searching for

Finally, my advice would be that once the lens has been reworked, to try to add a few backlinks each day. To give it a helping hand, I have scheduled the link to be bookmarked on approximately 30 sites, spread over 15 days.

In my next post I will look at another Case Study, to see what I think can be done to improve traffic.

Various factors contribute to getting traffic and in this article I discuss what works for me. There’s no cast iron guarantees that it will work for others

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