I last made an entry on this page:  01/13/2005 11:15 PM

SERP University SEO Blog

 Our Climb up the SERP's (Search Engine Result Pages)
 or
 Search Engine Optimization as close to real time as it gets

My Latest "Scratch Built" Website

I recently took a website live that I have been working on for a few weeks. It is a small family business in North Texas that has been selling natural skin care products; handmade soap and other handcrafted products for over 100 years. It was an interesting project because the owner had a definite idea about the "look and feel" of her website. She wanted a classy and refined web presence that would appeal to women --plenty of pictures and warm, soothing colors. This made perfect sense to me because women are the most frequent buyer of this type of product.

I found this particular small business niche to be quite competitive and with the emphasis on graphics it proved quite a challenge . You can view the website here: Paris Soap Company.

I had robots.txt set to disallow all robots while the site was under construction which I think is good practice. On 9/20, I reset robots.txt to allow the spiders to go to work and the Google Bot hit the site about 4 hours later. On 9/24, all the pages on Paris Soap were in the Google index--not too shabby!

Top Google Listings - Hard Work Pays Off

A quick of  look at some Google search engine results as of today's date

"real estate lead"  1 out of 2,350,000 results pages
"real estate lead generation"  1 out of 519,00 results pages
"real estate sales lead generation" 2 out of 239,000 results pages.

If you go back and look at my 9/6 entry, you will be able to see my reasoning and logic in driving this keyword phrase series to the top. I was concerned about this being one of the listings that just sort of 'float' into the number one position as Google aligns its' databases. I used the Google Dance Tool ( http://googledance.seochat.com/ ) to check all 10 servers and the listings were identical. I believe these number one's might actually stick.

The question I get asked most is " What is the ONE thing I can do to improve my position the most?"  I don't have the magic bullet answer. Remember, the search engines like Google are not looking at just ONE factor. They are looking at a combination of factors AND how they relate to each other. The chances of someone copying my exact pages and then getting the same search engine results is extremely unlikely. That is one reason why it is useless to try and protect your html source code from prying eyes. There is plenty more to search engine optimization than just simple items that are available for cursory inspection. A drive toward a number one listing starts with keyword phrase research and then progresses from there. I give complete details in my Sales Leads for Pennies e-book.

FREE E-book 'Top MSN Results are Easy' is wildly popular!

I didn't anticipate the demand for my latest, FREE e-book 'Top MSN Listings are Easy'. The server has been jammed for the last two days with people downloading the 4 page instructional e-book . It makes sense though. The e-book is FOR REAL!  I don't know how many times I have downloaded a 'free' e-book that was supposed to be the latest and greatest only to find it was just a bunch of generic crap that you had to hunt for among the ads. What a waste of time! This short and sweet free e-book gets right to the point! Read it through once and you will be well on your way to getting those top listings on the MSN search engine listings! You can get your own copy here. The free e-book is yours to distribute to friends and business colleagues, publish in your newsletter or put on your website. While you are visiting, you might want to look at our HUGE library of search engine optimization and website design articles from industry experts. Lots of good information or content to post on your website or in your newsletter. The library is here.

Top MSN Results are Easy!

Relevance equals Top Search Engine Placement

Search Engine Ranking Report for Google as of 09/05/03

Website:http://www.724leads.com

Website:http://www.724leads.com/real-estate-lead-generation.htm

The point of this table?  Two things, The first is optimizing for Inktomi/MSN/Hotbot through their PFI program does produce good results on Google! Here is an excerpt from my July Blog:

"7/12/03

Let me explain the next step.  Google is the 900 pound gorilla. They rule the Search Engine market right now.  This could change.  Nothing is ever constant in our fast changing Global Economy.  The problem is Google does things their way, after all they weigh 900 lbs!  A typical scenario would be to get your new website up and running, collect some inbound links and then hope GoogleBot finds you in short order.  Sometimes you are in the directory in 2 weeks and sometimes it is 6 months.... and you gotta hope you optimized everything correctly and picked the right keywords. It sure can get stressful!! Let me tell you about a little workaround.

There is another player out there called Inktomi. They have been around for awhile and were just recently acquired by Yahoo. I bet they become more important in the months to come. Right now, Inktomi provides search results to MSN and HotBot. they have a little paid inclusion deal that is a perfect setup for SEO's.  For $39 annually, you can get one URL included in their database and their robot will crawl your site every 48-72 hours.  See where I am going with this?  For all practical purposes, Inktomi indexes your site just about the same as Google.  Close but not exactly the same.  Close enough that if you can get a decent listing in Inktomi, the same should be true for Google.

So while I am waiting for old GoogleBot to come visiting 724 Leads, I am tweaking and refining and adjusting the 724 Home Page on Inktomi."

So you can see the results in the table - as Google lists more and more of the 7/24 pages, the results are favorable on the FIRST index. I don't have to wait and see how Google is going to treat the pages and then adjust

The second part of today's Search Engine Optimization BLOG entry concerns relevant search engine results and the best way to really target specific keyword phrases. I identified several different areas I wanted to target when I first started construction of 7/24 Leads, Basic Sales Lead generation breaks down into several industries. Insurance, mortgage, real estate lead generation  and even mlm lead generation were my specific targets. My method of targeting these highly competitive areas was to  make a separate page for each industry and then really target specific keyword phrases. The second part of the Google Search Engine results table above shows the results from http://www.724leads.com/real-estate-lead-generation.htm . As expected, this page targets real estate lead generation. These are highly competitive terms as evidenced by the results returned in Google:

You can see the advantages of specifically targeting relevant keyword phrases. An even better example can be seen by clicking the thumbnails below:

Website Design Basics

From our resource library, A comprehensive list of website do's and don'ts:

"Don't build a "canned" website. Don't be tempted by those offers from a hosting company or other source to build a website in a few minutes.  These "canned" websites allow little flexibility and most only allow you to enter text into a field. Likewise, don't be tempted to use the templates included with Microsoft FrontPage. Either one of these websites will adversely impact your credibility. They look like just what they are -- a minimal effort! Would you send a flyer out to a business prospect written in crayon by a six year old? Why build a website that is the equivalent of a crayon flyer? A tacky website will lose you prospects!

Don't have a one page website that looks like a flyer. You have seen those type pages with flashing banners, scrolling marquees, mission statements, flashy resumes, animated "click here" buttons and repeated exclamation points.  What better way to tell the prospect you are offering nothing but hype? Your opportunity to make a great first impression is limitless on the internet, why destroy that opportunity with one tacky page? Is this the image you really want to project?"

Read the entire article Website Design Basics - Search Engine Optimization and Website Credibility