How I Learned About Search Engine Optimization Techniques
Completely by accident I googled myself last year. I entered a standard common search phrase to locate 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 entertainer, and one that I didn’t know. 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. At this point 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 uneasiness. Finally, page 13. There’s MrGoodfriend’s omagic.com page listing.
I understood what the problem was. I had set up my web site years ago. I had left it on auto-pilot. I had performed some small maintenance on occasion. I was sure it was “optimized”. I had key words and such all over the page. I had nice images and content. In other words, I performed some on-page optimization, but very little off-page stuff.
I looked at mystermagicman’s pages, and started duplicating what he was doing. I increased my efforts on the off-page optimization. I also dissected my on-page optimization, and began using some webmaster tools to diagnose problems my site might pose for search engines. I realized 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! As a side benefit I learned a lot about cascading style sheets.
Next I tackled the social marketing things. I tweeted, facebooked, tumbled, pinned, and stumbled. I also requested my clients to provide 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 program for niche marketing online. Contact me if you ever want to go from page 13 to page 1 in six weeks. I think 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: http://www.omagic.com/magicianindallas.htm