so they specifically searched those terms? i just shared a bunch of my posts onto my google+ profile.. is my increase in site views related to that?

andsaltwater.com+meow

what does this mean? how is this a search term that they used? and what does the plus sign mean?

Will my email subscribers be sent to the correct site or should I send a notification?

I didn't have an understanding of how search engines worked, but that makes perfect sense. I actually get quite a bit of traffic from search engines and saw my referral #s drop the second I made that mistake.

Will the SERPs ever show the new link first? Eventually? Even if it's in months? It might be worth the days work for me to copy all my posts if so.

Thank you!

So this is what I'm trying to problem solve. I thought if I copied old posts, reposted them as new and deleted the old ones, that at least my search engine traffic would pick back up.

I made my most recent post sticky, so my regular visitors weren't too confused and tried it out. When I use Google to search for the posts, I still only see an old link. Where is the updated link? Does it just take to register with search engines? Does this not even work?

Thanks for your help!

http://en.support.wordpress.com/?s=more+traffic

http://en.support.wordpress.com/getting-more-views-and-traffic/

http://en.support.wordpress.com/getting-more-site-traffic/

Is there an SEO for Dummies? (Or at least people who don't have the time to spend learning all the ins and outs?)

Maybe a very clear tutorial somewhere that focuses on the basics?

Your blog is enabled with just about everything you need to be super-searchable. This includes an XML sitemap, which you can access at yourblogname.wordpress.com/sitemap.xml.

No need to do anything extra on your end. The sitemap file included with your blog is available to every search engine that supports the protocol, including Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Ask.com, and others. http://en.support.wordpress.com/sitemaps/#xml-sitemaps-for-search-engines

There is no FTP access to free hosted WordPress.com blogs and we cannot upload plugins into our blogs. Consequently we have to learn white hat basic SEO practices and apply them to our content in our blogs.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/ftp-access/
http://en.support.wordpress.com/plugins/

how do I choose the description of my site that shows up on google

You can't. Google display what it choose to display and we have no input into that.

many thanks in advance.

I've started a new blog and I'm having trouble changing the description of my website in search engines such as google. For example, if you search my site name (starting elevens) then it shows up 3rd choice, I believe. However, instead of showing my tagline it starts with my first post.

I've made websites with wordpress before, so I know I must be missing something here, but I can't figure out what it is. I've used a number of different SEO packs and nothing has changed it, made an xml sitemap... I'm having trouble knowing what I should do at this point.

Any help would be appreciated.

This support forum is for blogs hosted at WordPress.com. If your question is about a self-hosted WordPress blog then you'll find help at the WordPress.org forums.

If you don't understand the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org, you may find this information helpful.

If you forgot to include a link to your blog, you can reply and include it below. It'll help people to answer your question.

This is an automated message.

for example: This link and many many others are showing up in the Referrers:

http://www.google.co.in/?#hl=en&sa=X&ei=Jm1gTq6TFc-GrAfIme0N&ved=0CBYQBSgA&q=RibbonControlsLibrary%3Bcomponent/Themes/Office2007Blue.xaml is not a part of the project&spell=1&fp=1&biw=1138&bih=587&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&cad=b

This means that in the last year, till now, wordpress didn't update the filter rules for google? (because really, I see lots of google referrers that are coming from the google search engine which have the same url structure, and not a single one from yahoo, bing, duckduckgo, ..)

Thanks for commenting on this andrewspittle. I hope to see this changed in the near future.

In general search engine terms won't show up in the referrers box. Instead they'll show up in the "Search engine terms" module in your stats page.

It is normal to see a few Google referrers that are not searches as these will come from the other, non-search Google services.

Occasionally there will be referrers listed that are obviously search results. When this happens it's likely because the engine has changed it's URL scheme and we haven't yet updated our rules for filtering. Once updates are made the terms will be pulled into the "Search engine terms" module mentioned above but not shown in the referrer list.

So, for Bing, those searches will appear as part of the search engine terms used to find your site but won't appear as individual referrers. Hope that helps clear it all up.

So why does traffic from Bing (never?) not show up in the stats?

"Maybe you need to wait 4-5 minutes" --> read my first post, we tested it for 'several days' with other people -_- .

(and about the page about search engines (or should I say Google?), does google pay you for writing their name? You could have used Bing, Yahoo or just 'search engine' instead of 'Google' on every line. If you tag an article with Bing and you don't see the word Bing on the whole page but only google.. that makes me feel sad.)