Back in 2004 I began some research into how visitors find Matthew’s Blog (my personal weblog) which is currently (April 2006) hit by visitors at an average of 1 visit every 30 seconds to the various ‘blog entries’ via links from search engine results, mostly Google.

I undertook an experiment exploring the records provided by the Drupal (the free community software which hosts the blog).

I worked through the Drupal statistics records for 20 December 2004 and stripped out the code for the last 400 searches which had arrived at the blog via search engine results.

The actual search strings can be reviewed here: Search Results for 20 December 2004. Click some of them to understand how people search for information, they might not do it how you do it.

Since I undertook that research, I’ve changed the way I write blog entries.

From the 400 reviewed hits the majority came from Google, this is no surprise really considering Google is central to 95% of internet searchers online lives.

It demonstrates strongly that the likes of Yahoo! and A9 really have their work cut out within the search engine business and the only real way they can compete in this market is to produce better search results for users.

UK television watchers will also recognise regular advertisment from….Ask Jeeves (now rebranded as ‘Ask’). In the experiment, Ask brought me no visitors from its search results.

Out of 400 web searches 374 were Google’s. NTL World produced 10 results, NTL World’s search power is provided by Google! (and is full of adverts hindering the search a bit).

AOL? 13 results were from AOL search users.

From exploring the search results and understanding how searchers find blog entries I conclude the following:

Consider carefully the title of your blog entries. Key words produces links in search results where users are being specific about what they want to know about.

For example, if you are writing your opinion as a movie review blog entry about ‘The Terminal’ movie use relevant search words into the title.

So, instead of writing a blog entry and simply calling it …

‘The Terminal’

Consider:

‘The Terminal Film/Movie Review (starring Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta Jones)’

I believe that if someone searches on a search engine for ‘Terminal Catherine Zeta Jones’ the chances of the published blog entry returning in the search results is much higher.

The more keywords the searcher uses in their search, the more chances you have in returning as a search result if those keywords are part of your blog entry title. Get it? Confused? I hope so, its not easy.

Not only is it important to have good explanation key words in blog entry titles, but it is also essential if you want visitors to click the link through to your blog entry. Users will scan Google’s search results and click the one they find most relevant.

Here is another example:

I have a blog entry about the ‘Titanic’. Here it is.

If you search on Google for ‘Titanic’ a link through to my page will not return on the first page of Googles search responses. Why? Because hundreds of other people have better pages than I have about the ‘Titanic’ and most of those pages will have more ‘Google Juice’ than I do.

However, if you search on Google more specifically for ‘Titanic 1912′ a link to my page is at the bottom of Googles first page of search results (highlighted in yellow). Bingo, I’ve returned on the first page of a Google Search Results page. Lets have a look:

‘Titanic 1912′ remains a popular search and my statistics show it is a popular search string on search engines resulting in hundreds of hits to my Titanic page. The article was written on Sunday 19th of December 2004 and by Tuesday 25th April 2006 it had been read by 1871 people of which five people left a comment.

Advice: Don’t aim for the general searchers looking for ‘Titanic’, you wont get them. Aim for the more specific searchers, who use more than one keyword, such as ‘Titanic 1912′.

So, look at the above image again. Why do you think visitors clicking the search result on Google to read my blog when it is listed at the bottom of the search page, rather than the top? It could be:

• because they have already tried the other links and did not find the information they required;
• they are looking at as many pages as they can to gather information;
• my search results stands out in CAPITAL LETTERS from other search results all listed in lowercase.

Any of the above could be true, I like to think it is the third point.

I will be undertaking a similar 400 hits experiment soon to research if the decisions I made in 2004 have had a positive effect eighteen months on, I suspect they have.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below….