How I Learned About Search Engine Optimization Techniques
It was by sheer luck I searched google myself last year. I used a fairly common search keyword phrase to find a birthday party magician in Dallas. In the past I had been on the first 3 pages, and I pretty much felt that was good enough.
So here I was looking at the google page for my search, and there were about 3 or more pages for one particular entertainer, and one that I didn’t know. Obviously he had lots of listings on the first page, and I had none. No sweat, I thought to myself. I moved on to page two. Again no MrGoodfriend, and still a few more of the mysterymagicman listings. Hmmm… on to page 3. Wash, rinse, repeat. No MrGoodfriend, yes mysterymagicman. Here I’m a little miffed. Page 4, 5, 6… Okay, now I’m beginning to get annoyed. Pages 7 through 12 offer no relief to my growing anxiety. Finally, page 13. There’s MrGoodfriend’s omagic.com page listing.
I understood what the issue was. The web site had been set up years ago. It had been left on auto-pilot. I had performed some tiny adjustments on occasion. I was positive it was “optimized”. I had key words and such all over the page. The images and content were good. In other words, I had done some on-page optimization, but dreadfully little off-page optimization.
I looked at mystermagicman’s stuff, and started duplicating what he was doing. I increased my work on the off-page optimization. I also dissected my on-page optimization, and began using available webmaster tools to see what issues my site might pose for search engines. I realized my site had some slow loading pages. I applied some cascading style sheet tweaks (.css) and voila! I cut the page load time in half! Additionally I learned a great deal about cascading style sheets.
Next I tackled the social marketing things. I tweeted, facebooked, tumbled, pinned, and stumbled. I also invited my customers to do some reviews. Six weeks later, I’m on the first page of google for the same search.
So with this lesson in hand, I have partnered with a family member who owns eKrum Online Marketing Service, and we have generated a system for niche marketing online. Let me know if you ever want to go from page 13 to page 1 in six weeks. I am sure I can help you out.
About the Author
Derrel Allen is a technical adviser for a Fortune 100 company, a professional magician, and a dynamic online marketng expert. See his Search Engine Optimization website.