by Dinesh on December 31, 2009
So how did I take a newly registered website from non existent to Page Rank 3 in three months?
Let me start by telling you that this is the first project I have undertaken in Search Engine Optimization, so there is hope for all you people that have been told you need to spend thousands of dollars on SEO, bull! I did it with little to no spend.
In order to do this series of articles justice I should let you know my motivation for undertaking this project. Back in October my wife discovered a Personalized Children’s Books website while shopping for Christmas presents for our daughter, she was fascinated with the idea of personalizing a book for your child. Thus began the 3 month journey to buy, build, and promote her new website, like any other red blooded male I bragged that I would be able to get her ranked well in google in a short(ish)period of time. Little did I know she would take me up on my challenge. Well whats one supposed to do? READ, LEARN, heck even consider PAYING someone, luckily for my I chose the READ and LEARN option.
I have 2 posts prior to this one which explains the so-called Google Sandbox or Age Filter effect, I strongly suggest reading them before continuing with this post, you can find these posts here SEO Case Studies.
I am going to break this up in to several parts, I will document in detail each and every step I took to reach a Page Rank 3 in three months.
Part I will be published shortly, stay tuned…
by Dinesh on December 15, 2009
Search Engine Optimization is clearly an art, a science, but this does not mean any webmaster can not perform basic SEO. There are several things a webmaster can do to achieve a decent level of visibility in the Search Engine Results Page. Many of these tasks are simple yet often overlooked. I will give you my Top 5 tips which I believe every Webmaster should perform when designing a site.
1. “Meta Tags” – Should be included on all pages, remember though these tags no longer carry the same value they used to in the early search days. Today’s search engines have evolved and now have robust algorithms which take many factors into consideration. The days of “keyword stuffing” will no longer yield in better SERP. Google has gone as far as openly stating that they in fact do not even use the Meta Keyword tag to weigh in on their decision. That being said I strongly believe that all sites should leverage the use of <meta tags> appropriately.
2. “Friendly URL’s”- Make sure all pages on your site have a friendly URL. http://www.domain.com/about-us.html try and avoid long URL’s with many parameter passed. Most search engines can handle URI’s with up to 2 parameters but after that you run the risk that your pages may not get indexed.
3. “Sitemaps” – Create a sitemaps.xml and sitemap.html publish them to the search engines via their submission links. I like to create both pages some people say you only need one.
4. “Robots.txt” - Create a robots.txt file tell the search engine where your sitemap.xml file is located. Most search engines will respect the robots.txt file. BE SURE that you validate the file before publishing, a bad entry could potentially block the crawler from crawling your site all together.
5. “Unique Content”- I personally think this is the biggest of them all, have unique content for your visitors, if you have a site that is just repeating another site what is the incentivefor people to come visit you. Creating easy to read unique content will go very far, think about it, if you have a site that is interesting more people are likley to link to your site, the more “Relevant & Reliable” back links you get the better chance you will rank higher in SERP. I will cover this in more detail on my Top 5 Off Page SEO Tips
by Dinesh on December 12, 2009
It has been a little less than a week and it appears that Google has decided to let the the site start playing with the rest of the internet. Over the past week the SERP for “Personalized Children’s Book” has shifted from 180’s to the 120’s that a pretty decent drop for a week.
This begs the question, Is this a result of being “released” from the Google age delay filter?, or just the mere fact that Google has index additional pages and is slowly building and calulating our Page Rank.
We have made a few changes to the site, minified the Javascript and CSS which I will talk about a later time, compressed images and added a few more backlinks. Today is exactly 2 months from the day the domain was registered so I am happy with the way things are shaping up so far.
by Dinesh on December 6, 2009
I have read many articles and speculations about the so-called Google “Sandbox” or “Age Delay” filter, from what I have experienced it seems that such a filter does exist. Performing a query for allinanchor:”personalized children’s books” which is the top keyword/phrase I am targeting results in the site being listed on page 2/3 yet querying for keyword/phrase “Personalized Children’s Books” has us on page 18/19.
So how long does this filter apply? How long will the site be “Sand Boxed”? No one really knows the answer to this, but the speculation is that for new domain’s with similar content / material Google wants to keep the ”Age Delay Filter” for approximately 6-12 months. Is this fair? I am partial to both opinions it will help reduce spam sites ensuring the site/domain is something that is going to be around, but on the other hand legitimate sites will take a penalty for quite some time reducing the potential traffic.
Let’s see how long Google makes our site play in the “Sand Box”.
by Dinesh on December 5, 2009
SEO is the active practice of optimizing a web site by improving internal and external aspects in order to increase the traffic the site receives from search engines. Firms that practice SEO can vary; some have a highly specialized focus, while others take a more broad and general approach. Optimizing a web site for search engines can require looking at so many unique elements that many practitioners of SEO (SEOs) consider themselves to be in the broad field of website optimization (since so many of those elements intertwine).