Dear Reader
I will let you into a little secret. I had given up on Search Engine Optimization!
I had spent so much time searching the net, and so much money buying books that promised to "guarantee a Top 10 Search Engine Ranking" and it all ended the same - a lot of useless information, a lot of illegal "black hat" tactics, and more than anything - a whole load of misinformation.
After wasting so much time and money and getting nowhere, I decided the only thing to do was sift through the mountains of rubbish and misinformation that I had gathered over a period of about 6 months to find the rather limited legal and logical strategies that I could use. I put these strategies in place and then promptly forgot about SEO. I figured that I wasn't prepared to waste more time and money on trying to optimize my website and I would re-visit the minefield of Search Engine Optimization at a later date - when my patience was a little more controlled.
After a couple of weeks I noticed that the sales from my website were increasing.
I didn't take all that much notice at first, but when they increased by approximately 400% overnight, I figured that something must be working. I searched Google for my search phrases and I couldn't believe my eyes. My dismally ranked website was now ranking No: 2 for 2 of my keyword phrases and was also in the Top 10 for quite a lot of my others.
Now let me stress that these keyword phrases were not obscure keyword phrases that no-one would search under. They were very specifically targetted to my business. And obviously, people were searching under these phrases - otherwise I wouldn't be getting the sales.
I was astounded! I couldn't believe my eyes. I had obviously done something right.
And when I say that I was astounded - you'd better believe it! I immediately started working on another of my websites. This particular one was for my Graphic Design Consultancy (and Graphic Design is in a very competitive field for SEO keywords). The challenge was on!
I applied the exact same strategies plus a few more and just tweaked it to define a targetted area (local). I then anxiously waited to see whether I had actually solved the Search Engine Optimization secret, or whether I had just "fluked" it. Commonsense prevailed, and I knew that it's impossible to fluke this sort of thing. I felt better for a little while, then paranoia set in! Had forgotten something! Was it really that simple? I was driving myself crazy!
It was probably the longest 2 weeks I had ever spent!
Whoo Hooo! within 2 weeks I was ranking No: 1 For Graphic Design in 4 of my keyword phrases and in the Top 10 for another 8. The enquiries started rolling in and I was converting them to sales. I was on a roll.
I went on to optimize another 2 of my sites - with brilliant results and I have now optimized over 50 websites for my clients.
I won't kid you and tell you that every website I have optimized got into the Google Top 10. I have had 2 failures. They are both in extremely competitive fields and I advised the clients before starting that I could definitely improve their rankings (which wasn't hard because they were NOWHERE) but I wasn't sure how effective it would be. I did these 2 sites for free because I don't believe you should pay for what you don't get, and I wasn't sure I would be able to deliver anything at all.
To my surprise, they both rank constantly on the second page at between 12 and 16. It's not Top 10, but it's a HUGE improvement on what they were. And best of all, the clients are both extremely happy. They supplement this with the occasional AdWords campaign and do quite nicely - thank you very much! And they were my 2 failures!
I have to admit that it gives me a real buzz to see the results, and I love it when I get emails and phone calls from my clients thanking me, however, I am a creative person and I love my design work and I would much rather do that than SEO. In fact I would rather do a lot of things other than SEO.
For this reason, I wrote this book. It took me ages to write because I wanted to make it as easy as possible to understand.
It's a Step-by-Step Guide to optimizing your website for top search engine ranking. For easy reference, I use lots of screen shots so that you can actually see what I am explaining and immediately confirm that you are in the correct area and entering information into the right place. These screen shots are of my own websites so you can actually see that I am "hands-on" and have really done what I am showing you - not just re-hashing someone-elses useless information. |