Completely by accident I searched google for my website last year. I entered a fairly common search keyword phrase to find a birthday party magician in Dallas. With previous searches I had been on the first 3 pages, and I always felt that was decent results.
So here I was reviewing the google page for my search, and there were about 3 or more pages for one particular entertainer, and one that I was not familiar with. It seems he had a few 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 several more of the mysterymagicman listings. Hmmm… next, page 3. Wash, rinse, repeat. No MrGoodfriend, yes mysterymagicman. Now I’m a little miffed. Page 4, 5, 6… Okay, now I’m getting past miffed and on to p!ssed. Pages 7 through 12 deliver 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 done a little small maintenance here and there. I was sure it was “optimized”. I had meta tags and such appropriately on the page. The images and content were good. In other words, I had done some on-page optimization, but very little off-page optimization.
I analyzed mystermagicman’s stuff, and started imitating what he was doing. I ramped up my efforts on the off-page optimization. I also dissected my on-page optimization, and started using available webmaster tools to see what problems my site might create for search engines. I discovered my site had some slow loading pages. I did some cascading style sheet tweaks (.css) and voila! I cut the page load time in half! Additionally I learned a lot about cascading style sheets.
Next I did the social marketing things. 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 developed a program for niche marketing online. Contact me 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. Visit his website for party magician.
