Simple SEO 'How To' Case Study

[RedEvo]

I decided to create a simple SEO case study to show how some of the simple SEO concepts often discussed in these forums work. It's not meant to challenge other SEO's or push the limits of SEO, it's just a simple SEO Case Study for those who take the SEO DIY route.

The case study covers a period of one week. The SEO was carried out on Sunday 26th August 2007 and the results collated on Saturday the 1st September 2007, six days later.

There's a saying in Scotland that goes something like 'the cobblers bairns are always the poorest shod'. In short we don't put as much effort into SEO'ing our own site as we should. This case study addresses this.

The first thing we needed to do was research some keywords and phrases. For this exercise we primarily decided to go after our local market - Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire - and then Scotland and we wanted to promote our web design and SEO services.

Our first task was to look for phrases that have appeared in searches and for this we used Wordtracker and Web CEO. Search volumes were never going to be huge and finding key phrases with a high KEI (keyword effectiveness index) was going to be difficult.

For the purpose of this case study we arrived at a list of key phrases for which we would like to feature in Google.

None of these has a high KEI and none of them is going to generate huge amounts of traffic but we do know these phrases are used in searches. The key fact here is we KNOW these phrases are used - we are not simply guessing.

Having established our key phrases we now needed to write some content that incorporates them. To do this we needed to use our imagination as some of the phrases didn't make much sense. For example, to incorporate the key phrase 'Aberdeen Search Engine Promotion' we wrote the following....

"We offer many web related services to companies in and around Aberdeen. Search Engine Promotion is one of the more recent services......."

See how the key phrase spans a full stop? This isn't a problem, search engines ignore punctuation. You can view the SERP's for the key phrases we chose by searching for them to see how we incorporated the others into our website copy.

Next we created three new pages for our website. One for Aberdeen web design, one for Aberdeenshire web design and one for Aberdeen SEO. Each page was given a suitable search engine friendly URL, page title, and associated meta tags. Again you can see these by looking at the pages and viewing the source code.

Next we created the page content making sure we gave the content an H1 tagged title. For this exercise we have kept the tagging simple but we could have sub divided the content using H2 & H3 tags etc. We could also have made the key phrases bold.

Our website now had three new pages, each with a descriptive URL and copy containing the keywords we want to appear on Google for.

As we use a CMS that automatically updates the Google XML site map when new content is added we didn't need to do anything else for our Google Sitemap to be updated. However, rather than leave Google to review our site map at it's next scheduled check, we decided to request the site map be downloaded by resubmitting it in our webmaster tools account.

Google downloaded our new sitemap several hours later.

Through the week we checked for some of our phrases by searching on Google and wrapping some text from our new pages in quotes. This is an easy way of checking if a page has been Googled.

Today, Saturday 1st September these are the Google results for each of the phrases we optimised for.

Aberdeen Search Engine Promotion - top page 1
SEO Scotland - top page 5
Aberdeen SEO - top page 1
ethical SEO Scotland - middle page 2
internet marketing services Scotland - top page 8
search engine optimisation Scotland - middle page 5
website design Aberdeenshire - bottom page 5
Aberdeenshire Web design - top page 6
web designers Aberdeenshire - middle page 3
web design companies Aberdeenshire - bottom page 2
Design companies in Aberdeenshire - top page 2
web designers Aberdeen - bottom page 2
web design companies. Aberdeen - bottom page 1
internet Design companies Aberdeen - bottom page 1
web design Aberdeen companies - middle page 1

Now in some ways this proves nothing. Unless someone uses one of these phrases, finds us and secures our services the exercise has been of no real value. But it does show that doing some research, creating some content, having a well structured site, using freely available tools and applying some common sense can have a positive impact on your website.

I hope some of you find this of some use.

d

[WebPageOne-Solutions]

Nice work D, a good example of using SEO to obtain conversions or genuine leads. Optimizing highly competitive keywords is far harder, but I have seen more conversions from optimizing keywords that include geographic terms.

search marketing services (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=search+marketing+services&meta=) currently I bounce between 1 and 2 - highly competitive terms.

search marketing services midlands (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=search+marketing+services+midlands&meta=) - again normally 1 or 2 - more leads from this one. less competition.

[sirearl]

Interesting not trying to teach me granny to suck eggs but some sound advise regarding title tags here ,and why not to use your company name.

http://blogbusinessworld.blogspot.com/2006/01/title-tags-seo-by-any-other-name.html

Earl

[RedEvo]

Each page is optimised for several phrases, not just one. There is a limit to using the title tag.

IMHO.

;)

d

[sirearl]

Good results for such a short period,But as an SEO model it is slightly flawed in that the quality of the results would be largely dependent on the importance that the search engines put upon the site that the new pages are added to.

Earl

[RedEvo]

Yes, we have a page rank of 7 for our homepage and that can't hurt. However, the point of the exercise was to show the process, which I hope it does.

d

[sirearl]

Yes, we have a page rank of 7 for our homepage and that can't hurt. However, the point of the exercise was to show the process, which I hope it does.

d


Apologies for straying from the point as an excercise for optimizing a new page very good.:)

Earl

[RedEvo]

Cheers Earl, all your points were relevant - as usual - and add to any value the post has ;)

d

[pvcprinting]

Hi folks,

Have read this topic with interest as although we know we require some SEO, we have always been tentitive about tendering the work out. We do not have the slightest idea regarding websites and how they are used it is purely a tool for our business that 1 day we will get a grasp of!

Does the OP have any further insight or noddy guides as to how this can be done, if at all by complete novices?

Regards

Pete
p.s. To be honest We are not sure we are even showing anywhere on the search engines

[Djfreema]

A good example. For very competitive terms you would normally need to build inbound links and remember to consider the relevancy of site on which the links are from (e.g. for a car leasing site try and get links from sites whose focus is cars), also consider anchor text and if the link is going to be a banner, text link or as part of an article or blog post.

[RedEvo]

For the smaller business it could be argued that going after the very competitive keywords is not worth the effort. Note I'm only suggesting it might not be a good strategy.

Niche and long tail is probably a better tack if this is possible.

d

[sirearl]

For the smaller business it could be argued that going after the very competitive keywords is not worth the effort. Note I'm only suggesting it might not be a good strategy.

Niche and long tail is probably a better tack if this is possible.

d


Not sure I would agree with that,although I admitt it has its uses,always better to be a big fish in a small pond,but the rewards of being a big fish in a big pond can be demonstrated by this:

seo scotland actual searches 89

seo actual seaches 945,103

search engine optimization actual searches 3,643,183

and if you have a PR 7 or better most things are possible ;)


Earl

[RedEvo]

You are right. I think my concern is that if a company concentrates on the popular keywords they might be going head to head with bigger companies who are throwing big money at it with the big SEO boys.

I know the Internet is a level-ish playing field bit it's not totally flat.

Just some common sense needed I guess.

d

[sirearl]

You are right. I think my concern is that if a company concentrates on the popular keywords they might be going head to head with bigger companies who are throwing big money at it with the big SEO boys.



Agreed a big part of SEO is the ability to estimate a sites likely chances of ranking for given keywords based on an assessement of the competing sites.

And for the SEO to be honest enough to tell a client "No Chance " and as you suggest directing them to maybe more realistic long tail keyword phrases,or using other resources for obtaining a good ranking for the more highly competative keywords.

Earl

[WebPageOne-Solutions]

And for the SEO to be honest enough to tell a client "No Chance " and as you suggest directing them to maybe more realistic long tail keyword phrases,or using other resources for obtaining a good ranking for the more highly competative keywords.

This is a really good point and should be taken on board.

[I, Brian]

For the smaller business it could be argued that going after the very competitive keywords is not worth the effort. Note I'm only suggesting it might not be a good strategy.

Niche and long tail is probably a better tack if this is possible.

d

I agree, actually - you tend to need to have a pretty established site to chase the really competitive keywords, so smaller newer websites can work more efficiently on niche and longtail.

Besides, some smaller businesses tend to be total tightwads, expecting to conquer the world on £50/month. :p

[sirearl]

blimey thats got to be a first an SEO post where everyone is broadly in agreement so far ? :D:D

Earl

[RedEvo]

We need to address this and start falling out PDQ!!

d

[sirearl]

We need to address this and start falling out PDQ!!

d

I HATE PEOPLE WHO USE ABBREVIATIONS CAUSE THERE TO LAZY TO TYPE THINGS IN FULL:mad:

THERE THATS BACK TO NORMAL:p

Earl

[RedEvo]

And I hate people who use THERE instead of they're (as in they are).

This is more like it ;)

d

[sirearl]

And I hate people who use THERE instead of they're (as in they are).



d

Trust a scotsman to be pedantic,just cause you got a bloody great sporan:rolleyes:

[RedEvo]

Wrong again, I'm English. I just live in Scotland.

;)

d

[sirearl]

Wrong again, I'm English. I just live in Scotland.

;)

d


What are you some sort of Eskimo ?:eek:

I spent a lot of my childhood there ,bloody freezing

oops better get back on track or we will get the chop :eek:

[RedEvo]

Fresh air, no people, lots of space, I could go on ;)

d

[DarrenC]

Great post.

I really [really] struggle with keyword research.

I've used tools like Keyword Google's Adwords tool, and it tells me that the keyword is an 'average' search volume. Which isn't a great deal of help, so I use the Keyword Discovery tool and it tells me 241 over a 12 month period, is this from Yahoo or elsewhere?

[RedEvo]

I use Wordtracker and Web CEO. Wordtracker is very useful for keyphrase research. Well worth the dosh if you are serious about this stuff.

Glad you liked the case study. Happy to help if you need me to expand. We earn a living doing this but we have a transparent approach ;)

d

[DarrenC]

I've actually taken some of your case study suggestions and have used them on my main business site. [not in the sig]

I have created a Xml sitemap and submitted that through Google Webmaster.

I have some 1st tier pages that haven't being re-cached since 1 August, and I've made some changes, that I am waiting for Google to pick up.

Is this normal for Google, i.e. last cached over a month ago?

I will look into Web CEO.

[sirearl]

Great post.

I really [really] struggle with keyword research.

I've used tools like Keyword Google's Adwords tool, and it tells me that the keyword is an 'average' search volume. Which isn't a great deal of help, so I use the Keyword Discovery tool and it tells me 241 over a 12 month period, is this from Yahoo or elsewhere?

keyword discovery say it takes its results from all search engines.

Earl

[RedEvo]

Cheers Earl, good to know!

d

[DarrenC]

Thanks Earl.

It's a great tool and easy to use.

Are the results from the free version accurate, because one keyword said it had 213 searches through a 12 month period, and I know that it can't be right because I get more than that for it.