Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

[Yaro]

Blog Name: Entrepreneur's Journey

Blog URL: http://www.Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

Blog Description: Blog about Internet marketing and online business.

Blog Benefits: Blog has a huge catalogue of articles and podcast audio on how to start and build an Internet business. Uses simple language to introduce people to how to make money online.

Current traffic: Approximately 2000-4000 uniques per month, 450,000-500,000 pageviews, depending on which statistics package you read. About 1500-1800 RSS readers but it fluctuates daily.

Traffic goals: I'd like to get up to 10,000 uniques per month in the next 1-2 years and 5000 RSS readers.

Personal goals from blogging: I'd like to be able to make a consistent $2000-$4000 USD per month in advertising and affiliate income from this blog, as well as use it as a creative outlet to write and discuss ideas and topics I am interested in and meet people with similar interests as myself. I also want to use it as a launch pad for information products I create in the future.

Personal Details

Name: Yaro Starak
Sex: Male
Age: 27
Location: Currently Toronto, Canada

I have been blogging for two years. My longer timeline story can be found here - Yaro Starak Timeline

[Yaro]

Field Report Title: Testing different keyword phrases in the title tags for better SEO

Blog Name: Entrepreneur's Journey
Blog URL: http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com
Name: Yaro Starak

Explanation: I realized, in particular after the recent Google update, that Entrepreneur's Journey has some good authority in the search engines and consequently was ranking well in Google SERPs (search engine results pages).

I previously had used the title tags "Entrepreneur's Journey - by Yaro Starak" and if you know SEO that well you know the title tag at the top of the browser window is the most critical element for how well a blog page will rank.

My old title would give me good rankings for terms like "Entrepreneur's Journey" and my name, but those are not great keywords. I will always rank well for my name since there is not much competition (or search traffic for that matter) and "entrepreneur's journey" is not exactly a hot keyphrase.

I had been using the term "Internet Business" as a top keyword which I use on my blog quite often. So my initial thought was to get that term into the search title tags as well. However I thought I would do some keyword research first, so I went over to the Overture Keyword Selector Tool and put in "Internet Business" to see what last month's search traffic results for this term were like.

According to Overture the phrase "Business Internet" was searched for 24760 times in September 2006 and usually you can assume Google searchers are about 5-10 times what Overture gets. Not a bad amount but I was concerned because the keywords were in the reverse order.

I then checked out "Internet Marketing" which yielded a result of 114446 in overture - nearly 5 times as many as "Internet Business".

I decided to attempt to optimize for "Internet Marketing" and see how well my blog would rank for that term.

I changed the title of my blog to:

Internet Marketing | Entrepreneurs-Journey.com - by Yaro Starak

I hoped by using the name "Entrepreneurs-Journey.com" instead of Entrepreneur's Journey, I would also help to increase the rememberability of the domain name (it's hard enough to spell entrepreneur as it is!)

Results: It's been nearly a week now and so far I haven't noticed my blog showing up in Google for the search phrase "Internet Marketing" as yet. I expect it might be too early still.

However I think I may also be a bit ambitious going for such a popular and generic term. I am considering changing it to "Internet Marketing Blog" instead since this is more niche focused and although it doesn't have nearly as much traffic or perhaps going for the original phrase, "Internet business".

I will report back if I get any new results on this test.

[Yaro]

An update on my last report. I realized after a couple of weeks that the competition is too fierce for "Internet Marketing" so instead I went back to my previous focus, the less trafficked niche keyword of "Internet Business".

I won't likely receive nearly as much search traffic from targeting this keyword phrase but I should be able to get a first page ranking for "Internet business" eventually and already have number one for "Internet business blog" in Google.

I actually like the phrase "Internet business" as a better descriptor for what my blog is about anyway, it makes more sense and I believe the search traffic that does come through should be highly targeted since my blog is essentially about Internet business...well most of the time!

I'll let you know if I notice any change in my search engine results pages as a result of doing this keyword change.

[Blaine Moore]

Aesthetically, I like internet business as a term better and think that it fits what you write about much more closely than internet marketing.

Aesthetics don't have anything to do with volume of traffic, but hopefully it will still bring in just as many people. Whether it does or not, hopefully they will be more targetted and really looking for what you have to share.

[andrew wee]

Hi Yaro,
I'd attended the World Internet Summit Singapore and was talking to Andrew and Daryl Grant when they mentioned you'd done an interview with them and to check it out.

I liked visiting your blog, and especially the timeline.
it was comprehensive and gives us a measure of your mettle.

it's encouraging to see that your journey isn't just a stratospheric straight line and your experience with the thailand chargebacks on the magic cards is something that entrepreneurs can identify with at some stage of their journey.

---
related to your traffic strategy, i think it'd be easier to optimize along the lines of an internet marketing niche, such as blog marketing, rather than address the entire internet marketing field, where you're facing off against the likes of alex mandossian, joel comm and the like.

personally, i feel social traffic is more immediate and could be a truer traffic picture than just hard SEO. so blog, forum and social bookmarking are eventually going to outpace pure SEO i think.

ps: didnt realize you're in 9rules, just found that out today!

[Yaro]

Andrew - Yep, check out the podcasts section on my blog - there is a two part interview with Daryl there.

I wish I could have been with you in Singapore - I really need to get out to more of these conferences.

Thanks for your advice regarding keywords. I'm holding the number one position for "Internet Business Blog" at the moment, however I don't think the traffic is that high. Although I think that phrase really explains this blog well and for some reason I feel that phrase as more credibility than "Internet marketing" at the moment so I'm going to stick with it for a while yet.

Welcome to 9rules as well Andrew!

[andrew wee]

Hi Yaro,
good to see you on gobala's blog.

"internet business blog" -- yeah, i'm not sure that it'll lead to a high number of organic searches.

one useful tip i got from the Grants was to aim for several low competition keywords, hence "business blog" and "corporate blogging" might lead to a higher number of searches.

ps: tks for the 9rules welcome!

and perhaps we'll see you in singapore sometime.