Throughout my career, and especially in the past four of working at an agency, I have been tasked with collaborating with clients and my agency’s design team to develop Web sites for a wide range of clients. It is a fun, creative and yes, challenging process that I have come to enjoy. Yet, in my role as an account supervisor, I am charged with creating the copy for the site and supervising the execution of the project. Essentially, I need to ensure a client’s happiness. I have left all the search engine optimization (SEO) practices and challenges to my expert design team. Well, that changed when I needed to create a site and optimize it for my Web Analytics and SEO class for the graduate certificate program at West Virginia University.
I will be the first to say that I knew keywords were critical to the success of your Web site, but I did not know the importance of links and title tags. In fact, according to an article on the Web Workshop blog, link text is the single most important method for Google, and other search engines, to track and rank your site (Craven, 2007). Once Google adopted this method, linking became almost essential. The rationale behind this practice is that the more links to and from a site, the more important and credible the site (Craven, 2007).
This is why I can see the importance linking played in developing my site for this experiment. Yes, even though this is marketing and not chemistry, we still conduct experiments. For this experiment, I followed the text anchor model specified by Randfish on the SEOmoz blog. His experiment looks at links vs. keywords vs. tags in increasing search engine optimization (Randfish, 2008).
The first step was creating a site. In accomplishing this, I used Google’s site building tool. This was an easy tool to use. My only challenge was coming up with content for the site . Taking my knowledge of the importance of linking, I used some information contained on this blog and those links to help populate the site, including taking the steps recommended by Randfish. I placed inbound links on both my Facebook and Twitter pages to help increase traffic and ranking. As mentioned before in this blog, social media does play a crucial role in site optimization, especially as this medium continues to increase its breadth and depth. Too, I believe now that this link has been placed on this blog, the SEO placement will also increase.
The keywords I selected for this site were the following: “Web analytics,” “WVU,” “West Virginia University,” “SEO,” and “search engine optimization.”
My results were exactly what I thought they would be: a combination of linking and tagging helped this small, experimental site increase its presence. For example, when entering the keywords “Web analytics WVU” my site ranked third on Google. The reason for this ranking, I had fallen behind a site from the university. Next time, I will be sure to be more creative with my title and possible keywords. The site also ranked third on Google with the keywords “SEO WVU.” Yet, when entering the phrase “Web analytics SEO WVU” in to Google, the site ranked first. In fact, that combination of keywords placed me ahead of the WVU blog on the topic. In some ways, I am happy to say mission accomplished. But this mission is far from over. It is only the beginning of me gaining a better and applicable understanding of SEO.
When conducting a search on Bing and Yahoo, my site was virtually non-existent. This may be because of the importance this method placed on linking. Too, my site is relatively young, and the age of a site does have a factor on SEO. According to the blog, SEO Chat, domain age is a key factor in SEO results (SEO Chat, 2006). Plus, I do wonder if using a Google Web site tool, and having google.com in the site address played a role in my site’s placement, or lack of on other search engines. As a continuing experiment, I will continue updating this site to see how linking and other tagging tools can help this little site gain momentum on other search engines, besides Google.
This exercise allowed me to see what I was actually reading, and as we have heard, seeing is believing. I learned the true importance of keywords. I had to think as a searcher, not as someone familiar to the product or service. When I selected my title and keywords, I thought about how I would go about searching for this site on Google if I was going into it blind. This can be a cumbersome task, but it is one that I found beneficial, as evidenced by my ranking results.
Too, I witnessed first-hand the importance of links - both internal and inbound – to a site. I watched my site advance in the search engine rankings. Yes, seeing is believing, and I am excited to continue on this learning curve and increase my knowledge of SEO. I look forward to having my clients benefit from the knowledge I have gained throughout this course.
References
Craven, P (2007). Inbound links, link exchanges and link acquisition. Web Workshop Blog. Retrieved February 5, 2010, from http://www.webworkshop.net/inbound-links.html
Randfish (2008). Results of Google Experimentation - Only the First Anchor Text Counts. SEOmoz Blog. Retrieved January 31, 2010, from http://www.seomoz.org/blog/results-of-google-experimentation-only-the-first-anchor-text-counts
SEO Chat (2006). SEO Tools – Domain Age. SEO Chat Blog. Retrieved February 8, 2010, from http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/domain-age/
I will be the first to say that I knew keywords were critical to the success of your Web site, but I did not know the importance of links and title tags. In fact, according to an article on the Web Workshop blog, link text is the single most important method for Google, and other search engines, to track and rank your site (Craven, 2007). Once Google adopted this method, linking became almost essential. The rationale behind this practice is that the more links to and from a site, the more important and credible the site (Craven, 2007).
This is why I can see the importance linking played in developing my site for this experiment. Yes, even though this is marketing and not chemistry, we still conduct experiments. For this experiment, I followed the text anchor model specified by Randfish on the SEOmoz blog. His experiment looks at links vs. keywords vs. tags in increasing search engine optimization (Randfish, 2008).
The first step was creating a site. In accomplishing this, I used Google’s site building tool. This was an easy tool to use. My only challenge was coming up with content for the site . Taking my knowledge of the importance of linking, I used some information contained on this blog and those links to help populate the site, including taking the steps recommended by Randfish. I placed inbound links on both my Facebook and Twitter pages to help increase traffic and ranking. As mentioned before in this blog, social media does play a crucial role in site optimization, especially as this medium continues to increase its breadth and depth. Too, I believe now that this link has been placed on this blog, the SEO placement will also increase.
The keywords I selected for this site were the following: “Web analytics,” “WVU,” “West Virginia University,” “SEO,” and “search engine optimization.”
My results were exactly what I thought they would be: a combination of linking and tagging helped this small, experimental site increase its presence. For example, when entering the keywords “Web analytics WVU” my site ranked third on Google. The reason for this ranking, I had fallen behind a site from the university. Next time, I will be sure to be more creative with my title and possible keywords. The site also ranked third on Google with the keywords “SEO WVU.” Yet, when entering the phrase “Web analytics SEO WVU” in to Google, the site ranked first. In fact, that combination of keywords placed me ahead of the WVU blog on the topic. In some ways, I am happy to say mission accomplished. But this mission is far from over. It is only the beginning of me gaining a better and applicable understanding of SEO.
When conducting a search on Bing and Yahoo, my site was virtually non-existent. This may be because of the importance this method placed on linking. Too, my site is relatively young, and the age of a site does have a factor on SEO. According to the blog, SEO Chat, domain age is a key factor in SEO results (SEO Chat, 2006). Plus, I do wonder if using a Google Web site tool, and having google.com in the site address played a role in my site’s placement, or lack of on other search engines. As a continuing experiment, I will continue updating this site to see how linking and other tagging tools can help this little site gain momentum on other search engines, besides Google.
This exercise allowed me to see what I was actually reading, and as we have heard, seeing is believing. I learned the true importance of keywords. I had to think as a searcher, not as someone familiar to the product or service. When I selected my title and keywords, I thought about how I would go about searching for this site on Google if I was going into it blind. This can be a cumbersome task, but it is one that I found beneficial, as evidenced by my ranking results.
Too, I witnessed first-hand the importance of links - both internal and inbound – to a site. I watched my site advance in the search engine rankings. Yes, seeing is believing, and I am excited to continue on this learning curve and increase my knowledge of SEO. I look forward to having my clients benefit from the knowledge I have gained throughout this course.
References
Craven, P (2007). Inbound links, link exchanges and link acquisition. Web Workshop Blog. Retrieved February 5, 2010, from http://www.webworkshop.net/inbound-links.html
Randfish (2008). Results of Google Experimentation - Only the First Anchor Text Counts. SEOmoz Blog. Retrieved January 31, 2010, from http://www.seomoz.org/blog/results-of-google-experimentation-only-the-first-anchor-text-counts
SEO Chat (2006). SEO Tools – Domain Age. SEO Chat Blog. Retrieved February 8, 2010, from http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/domain-age/
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