#1 on Yahoo. A couple things I've learned

I, the data geek, am loving Google Analytics and Jaaxy for what they can tell me about how my site is doing and what needs to be improved.

In light of that, I wanted to offer the following for the newcomer about what a recent success has taught me.

Here's a keyword that has helped rank an article on Yahoo and Bing (not yet on Google):

Ranked #1 on Yahoo

This article above has been ranked consistently high on Yahoo.

For a while it was #2 or #4, for the better part of the last four days it's been #1. Today, it's #2. (This is its position below the paid ads.)

It's an article on lodging, and I'm pretty pleased that it's ranking above fierce competitors like Booking.com, Trivago, and TripAdvisor.

It goes to show you that what we learn about keywords and SEO works!

Keywords

The keyword I used to rank is "places to stay in Kerrville."

My strategy is to "own" the Internet market about the town I live in, so that when visitors want to know something about Kerrville, Texas, they'll end up at my site. I'm counting on modest traffic from a thousand different starting points, rather than a stampede coming from one starting point.

SEO

In using Yoast -- I now reverted to using the All in One SEO Kit -- after writing the article and while editing in WP, the plugin encouraged me to use a number in the title, so I added a "3" to indicate that these were the "3" places to stay at.

I also read somewhere that using a superlative -- "best," "most beautiful," "smartest," "richest" -- is a good way to increase SEO. (Now, I can't look at the internet anymore and not see that the top searches have this attribute in common.)

So I now sometimes use superlatives in my title.

As an important side note, Eric Cantu has a good video on keywords and Site Ranking, in which he also addresses long tails:

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/training/how-to-use-jaaxy-si...

Finally...partnership and collaboration

I collaborated with the owner of one of the properties I reviewed, and he shared it on his FB...and his MANY friends also shared it.

Something like 15+ of his friends shared the post. And among those, perhaps half shared it again, and among THOSE, one or two who shared it had like 12-15 shares among THEIR thousands of friends. So it went viral among the original owner's FB friend group. My viewership that day spiked like 2000% over the previous day.

No joke.

Collaboration and partnerships also make this work a lot more fun.

We add value to others' businesses. They add value to ours, and we both make money.