It was by sheer accident that I googled my website last year. I used a standard 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 generally felt that was good enough.
So here I was looking at the google page for my query, and there were several pages for one particular entertainer, and one that I didn’t know. It seems he had lots of listings on the first page, and I had none. No sweat, I thought to myself. On to page two. Again no MrGoodfriend, and still a few more of the mysterymagicman listings. Hmmm… next, page 3. Wash, rinse, repeat. No MrGoodfriend, yes mysterymagicman. Here I’m a little miffed. Page 4, 5, 6… Okay, now I’m beginning to get annoyed. Pages 7 through 12 provide no relief to my growing uneasiness. Finally, page 13. There’s MrGoodfriend’s omagic.com page listing.
I realized what the issue was. The web site had been set up years ago. It had been left on auto-pilot. I had done some minor tweaking on occasion. I was sure it was “optimized”. I had key words and such all over the page. The images and content were good. In other words, I performed some on-page optimization, but dreadfully little off-page optimization.
I analyzed mystermagicman’s listings, and started following what he was doing. I ramped up my efforts on the off-page optimization. I also analyzed my on-page optimization, and began using some webmaster tools to analyze issues 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 reduced the page load time by half! Plus I learned a great deal about cascading style sheets.
Next I focused on the social marketing aspects. I tweeted, facebooked, tumbled, pinned, and stumbled. I also encouraged my customers 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 partnered with a family member who owns eKrum Online Marketing Services, and we have developed a system for niche marketing online. Contact me if you ever want to go from page 13 to page 1 in six weeks. I believe 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.
