Completely by accident I searched google myself a few months ago. I used a standard 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 always felt that was good enough.
So here I was reviewing the google page for my search, and there were about 3 or more pages for one particular magician, 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. Still no MrGoodfriend, and still a few more of the mysterymagicman listings. Hmmm… on to page 3. Wash, rinse, repeat. No MrGoodfriend, yes mysterymagicman. At this point I’m a little miffed. Page 4, 5, 6… Okay, now things are getting bleak. Pages 7 through 12 deliver no relief to my growing uneasiness. Finally, page 13. There’s MrGoodfriend’s omagic.com page listing.
I realized what the problem 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 did some on-page optimization, but dreadfully little off-page stuff.
I observed mystermagicman’s listings, and started imitating what he was doing. I increased my efforts on the off-page optimization. I also revisited my on-page optimization, and began using available webmaster tools to diagnose issues my site might create for search engines. I found my site had some slow loading pages. I did some cascading style sheet improvements (.css) and voila! I cut the page load time in half! Plus I learned a great deal about cascading style sheets.
Next I did the social marketing tactics. I tweeted, facebooked, tumbled, pinned, and stumbled. I also requested my customers to write 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 joined with a family member who owns eKrum Online Marketing Services, and we have generated a system for niche marketing online. Contact me if you ever want to go from page 13 to page 1 in six weeks. I believe 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. Click here for his internet news and reviews.
