Keyword Optimization Guide: Use Your Rankings
For established sites, I've already talked about how important it is to use your analytics to find keywords to target, but that was more along the lines of seeing if there are new pages you can create or if there were adjustments to be made to landing pages you already have. Another way established sites can get a boost in their traffic is to evaluate their rankings and look for places where they can make big improvements.
Taking another look at the AOL data posted on SEO Black Hat, you'll see how positions six through ten do not show a lot of traffic change by moving up or down a position. Once you get to the fifth spot though, every move up the later will give you a jump in traffic, the biggest coming when you hit the holy grail found at the top position.
When evaluating my keyword optimization, my goal is to get as many no. 1 positions as I possibly can. Take a look at your analytics to find the top producing keywords, then open up a spreadsheet and in the next column enter your position in the results pages. If you find any high traffic keywords were you are in positions two through five, you need to really hit these keywords hard to try and get to the top spot.
For every keyword that you hold the top spot, your goal is to maintain it. Monitor those terms each week, and to make things easier we have found a rankings tracker that will do all of the work for you. If any of these terms slip, they become your top priority until you regain your spot. Remember in our how many keywords to target article we said to limit your efforts to only a few at one time, and lost no. 1's are your best chance at getting to the top of the heap.
Even if some of your top keywords that you would like to target are on page 2, don't worry about them at the expense of those already on page 1. You'll get more value out of moving those terms up to no. 1 than you will by starting fresh on another term you covet.