Top 20 Results for the phrase: Web Marketing

Over the last several months we have been doing some focused optimization on our site. We haven't done a ton of it, mostly because we are busy working with paying customers. But we have had a pretty solid plan. We chose to target one specific phrase. We decided that we wanted to target the phrase: web marketing So, if we had an option, instead of saying:

• search engine optimization
• SEO
• internet marketing
• Or any of the myriad of other variety of phrases, we always would say: Web Marketing. For the last several months, once a month, I would go out and hand check Google, Yahoo and MSN for that single phrase. These have been my findings so far: 7/28/05 - Our blog is currently #88 on Yahoo 8/19/05 - about 470 on Google 51 on Yahoo do not see us on MSN 9/29/05 74 on Yahoo 6 on MSN 10/26/05 92 on Yahoo do not see us on MSN 11/23/05 79 on Yahoo Today was the day I had scheduled to check. And what to my wondering eyes did appear but: 12/29/05 13 on Yahoo 6 on MSN You can see the current results for that phrase on MSN and Yahoo here: web marketing - SBC Yahoo! Search Results MSN Search: web marketing This is the first time that we were able to simultaneously get both MSN and Yahoo in the top 20. That's pretty exciting. I wouldn't be surprised to check next month and find that both the listings drop off. But I'm pleased to see that we seem to be holding traction for that phrase. Interestingly, the big optimization move we did this month was actually "de-linking". We had sitewide links on two other informational sites that rank well for their targeted key phrases. We decided to try taking those down because Jagger effected us pretty negatively (it still is, actually). It's possible that this might have had a positive effect over at Yahoo and MSN. Jagger was interesting because we didn't see a single client's web site damaged in that update. But ours got hurt. We got buried back on page 2 and 3 where we were normally on page 1. I attribute this to the fact that we experiment with some more aggressive linking with our site than we suggest for clients. We often use our site for testing that goes beyond anything we would typically recommend. I think we got penalized for it. I don't know exactly how long to wait between changes to see what linking changes have an effect. When I do a link check in Google, the results still show links that have been removed. I know that the results that appear in the link results are not what Google uses for its actual linking parameters. But I wonder if it still thinks the sitewide links exist on these sites. In Yahoo Site Explorer, the links are getting removed. Although I still see some of them. My next thought is that I'm considering wrapping all external links from my site in a no-follow attribute. I honestly don't sell any links on my site. But, as an example, our blog currently links to resources that I find interesting. Right now it's on every page of the blog on the left side. I could see that as looking suspicious. I also have a domain that does a 302 redirect to a subsection of our site. That is still sitewide on another site. I think that's my first order of business. I'll get that removed and see if it does anything. While I hate the fact that I'm losing traffic from Google (it's on par with my Yahoo traffic and normally Google is 5 to 10 times the traffic I get from Yahoo), this is a good opportunity to really learn more about the post-Jagger algorithm. I'll keep you posted as I continue experimenting with different ideas. But for now, I just feel really grateful for our Yahoo and MSN positions. Happy New Year to us! :)