Increase in Google PR but no increase in hits

[grtboss]

I have seen my site http://www.grassrootstrading.com/ increase from a google page rank of 2 in March to the current PR of 5. My disappointment though is that I have not yet seen an appreciable increase in hits. I'm currently working on adding more content and backlinks...banner exchanges..free classifieds and so on. I have tried PPC, and I have a pretty good idea which provider gives me the best ROI, but my ad budget is somewhat nonexistent.

Any idea what I could be missing?

[Mel]

Your site traffic (hits is a poor metric to use to judge it, unique visitors is better IMO) is not much dependant on your PR but on:

Your choice of keywords
Your rankings for those keywords
The wording of your SERP title and description.

[grtboss]

Thanks for your response.

How do I determine the ranking of the keywords that I'm using?. I couldn't find anything in the google tool bar.

[janeth]

First thing I would do is not worry about the Google tool bar.

[Mel]

Originally Posted by grtboss

Thanks for your response.

How do I determine the ranking of the keywords that I'm using?. I couldn't find anything in the google tool bar.

Just enter the search term in the Google search bar and see where your site comes up.

tip: if you're not yet in the top ten and counting through the SERPs is tiresome, try setting your prefernces in Google to 100 results per page and search at http://www.google.com/ie which will give you a numbered list of results. If you have recently visited most of the pages in the site, your browser will show most listings in blue but yours in red, making it easier to find.

[grtboss]

Originally Posted by Mel

Just enter the search term in the Google search bar and see where your site comes up.

Thanks for the tip. I also found out that by typing in "online auction grassrootstrading.com" I would get a numbered listing with all my inbound links, starting with my main page.

I was surprised though to see only about 16 links..even though I have more than that. I wonder why Google does not show all my inbound links.

[Mel]

Look for the preferences link just to the right of the search button at the top of the google page.

[grtboss]

Originally Posted by Mel

Look for the preferences link just to the right of the search button at the top of the google page.

Thanks Mel. Actually to my relief and dismay, my website came up, but at #658 out of 820 results....small wonder that my site has dismal traffic and unique visitors. I'm using the same keywords(or close to it) that the highest ranked online auction sites are using, and I'm constantly working on adding more backlinks.Where should I concentrate my effort on..content? Since my site relies more on auction items than content such as articles..etc..are the item titles and descriptions considered content by the search engines?

[Mel]

By targeting the same keywords as the major auction sites you are putting yourself in a very competitive arena.
The fastest route to good rankings is IMO undoubtedly anchor text links, but they should be supported by very good optimized content on the pages they point to.

Anything that the search engines index they will rank, but unless there is good content and links the auction items are not going to help ranking much directly, but indirectly every page is an opportunity to add anchor text links to other pages.

[grtboss]

Originally Posted by Mel

Anything that the search engines index they will rank, but unless there is good content and links the auction items are not going to help ranking much directly, but indirectly every page is an opportunity to add anchor text links to other pages.

I will definitely be working on adding anchor text links to other pages.

Thanks again for your honest and straightforward answers