Search Engine Ranking Case Study

Make A Living Online member Hazel Davis has given me permission to reprint our confidential email discussions about her search engine ranking. This is a must read if you need more traffic to your website.

As you'll see from this actual email transcript, getting top search engine ranking can be relatively simple if you follow some proven techniques...

Message 1:
At 12:30 PM 5/27/2003 -0400, Hazel Davis wrote:

Jim, I don't have much faith that I will make any money this year. I am spending so much time at the computer without accomplishing ONE thing. So far I have had just one couple sign up for my August lighthouse tour. I would like to place an ad somewhere but where is the best place? I don't have much money left for anything, I have paid and paid but nothing is coming in. The more I read, the more confused I get. Please advise. Thanks, Hazel www.maineexpressions.com

Message 2:
From: Jim Daniels
To: Hazel Davis
Date: Wednesday, May 28, 2003 11:20 AM

Hi Hazel,

Your weekly website traffic numbers as reported by web-stat.com indicate to me that your REAL problem is that you need more website traffic. And I have some ideas that will work if you follow the directions very closely...

(This will not cost you anything and it is MORE effective than paid advertising. It has to do with getting targeted search engine traffic.)

I did a little research for you and found there were some 60,000+ combined searches being performed monthly at major engines, for the following phrases...

maine vacation
maine light house
maine coast
travel to maine

You can get a lot of that traffic if you make some minor, yet VERY important changes at your site.

1. You should change the Title of your index.html page from...

<title>Maine Lighthouses coastal tours blueberries lobsters jams</title>

to...

<title>A Maine light house tour on your coast of Maine vacation</title>

You should also replace your web page headline at the top of your main page.

Instead of what you have now...

Maine Lighthouse tours and Maine Products

It should read...

Coming to the Maine coast for a vacation? Our Maine light house tours are fun and educational.

Also work those keyword phrases into the top section of that first paragraph at your site.

Finally, you need TEXT links from ALL your web pages, that link to your main page. (You can keep your graphical button links but you need to add text links at the bottom.) And the text you use in those links is very important. When linking to your main page from any page (your web pages or a link partner's site) you want the link to say simply, "Maine Light House". This will really help when the SE spiders do their dance and list your site.

Once you do all this, go to http://www.google.com/addurl.html and add your site. It may take a while to get listed but you can rank really well if you follow my directions to a T.

I managed to get a client of mine's Spa site to a top position at google.com (the world's busiest search engine) with this exact strategy. Go to google.com and search for Rhode Island day spa and you'll see her tranquilitydayspa.biz in or near the top position. :-)

Implement all that and you will see A LOT of traffic from the search engines and you'll start booking more tours.

And remember, this is not considered tricking or spamming the search engines. It is simply providing them with the information they need to properly spider and index your website. If more websites implemented these techniques, search engines would be able to offer their clients better searching. That's a GOOD thing for search engines, so help them help you. ;-)

Jim
 

Message 3:
From: "Hazel Davis"
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 10:54:01

Jim, I did everything you told be to do and today I am quite excited. I made #1 on google for my best keyword phrase, Maine Lighthouse Tours and also number one at yahoo. I also placed well in 5 other areas. That was fast. Thank you for your expert advice. I never would have been able to accomplish that without you. It has been, almost 2 years since I started Maine Expressions Lighthouse Tours. I have spent thousands of dollars and only now am I able to see some results. I can't thank you enough.

Hazel

Message 4:
From: Jim Daniels
To: H Lin Davis
Date: Monday, June 02, 2003 12:24 PM

Hi Hazel,

Usually, the results are not that fast, but the timing was perfect. Google did their spidering and re-indexing over the last few days. I just checked it out and see that your site rocketed to...

Number 1 of 9,370 sites for the search term Maine lighthouse tour and Maine lighthouse tours

Plus top 50 listings for all of the following busy keywords...

coast of maine vacation
maine light house
lighthouse tour
Maine vacation

I'm sure I do not have to tell you how great those results are. Not only the speed at which they were achieved but also the effectiveness. And while the rankings will vary, you are FAR better off than you were. (Of course your visitors stats are telling you that!)

This will bring you a good quantity of highly targeted traffic. Not only is google.com the busiest search engine, as you quickly found out, Yahoo uses their database as well so your rankings carry over there too. In fact I just searched on Maine lighthouse tour at yahoo.com and your fall tour page was the top ranked site. :-)

To your growing success,
Jim

What this lesson means to other Make A Living Online members...

Many sites can use this exact technique to get their sites better search engine ranking. Sure, the size of the niche you are in has a big bearing on how well you can do. Hazel got her Maine lighthouse tours website to number one. And yes, the niche is fairly small.

If you are promoting say, pet supplies, you'll have a lot more competition than Hazel. But that just means you need to focus on the right keywords that do not have as much competition.

For instance, my own niche is Internet Marketing. It is a huge market with millions of sites competing. But if I choose the right keywords, I can get good ranking too.

For instance, search for "marketing articles" at one of those big search engines and you'll find one of my BizWeb2000 pages. I have lots of web pages optimized for specific terms like that, and together they add up to quite a bit of free, targeted traffic.

So go to Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool and start researching YOUR best keywords. Once you find them, implement them at your site just as Hazel has done above. You may be pleasantly surprised at the results as well. Just don't expect it to happen as fast as it did for Hazel. ;-)