Tuesday 2 June 2009

Success with new project

First results...
For what it's worth (and it's not worth anything just yet...) I have managed to get ranked for my keyword at No.7 on the first page google.com SERP, and No.6 for a UK search. I am pleased with this result after what is relatively little effort, I have two hopes for the future when it comes to the SERP results:
1) That I can improve the position to the top three
2) That I have correctly identified a keyword that will be useful in terms or traffic and ultimately monetisation.
I will do some more investigation into related keywords to see how well I rank for those too. I usually simply type keywords into google, but there is a tool which will do this search for you called 'SERPsFINDER' - it's a free app that simply searches Google, Yahoo and LiveSearch - it returns SERP for your chosen keyword on your chosen domain - it may deliver different results from your own searching and in this case, it returned a result of postion 17 in google.com for my primary keyword. Doing this type of testing also gives you the chance to run an eye over the sites that rank above your own, giving you a opportunity to get some ideas that you may be able to incorporate into your own site.

I noted that with the hosting package that I bought, I was offered £50 free PPC advertising with bidvertiser which I took in order to generate some initial traffic. The keyword is relatively rare (between 260,000 and 2.3m results in google depending on how the search is phrased), and I am not a huge fan of bidvertiser (except when it is free...) so I am not expecting much traffic from this quarter, but at this stage I am looking for traffic from anywhere... If I were to be actually paying for a PPC campaign, then I would need to have my site a bit nearer to completion stage currently it is really just getting towards the end of the initial build stage.
I have printed out my pages so I can run a critical eye over them - currently five pages are live, there is one that needs editing - this will be like a FAQ or glossary page - these can be very useful for picking up keyword-linked traffic. I find having the pages printed in front of me allows me to see where I can improve the way the site links together, and helps to prevent duplication of content.
These initial results may not be long-term as I have seen freak SERP results from time time with new pages - hopefully I will be back in a few weeks time with a higher search position to crow about and some more content to help keep that position. So far, these results have come purely from on-site optimisation, I have yet to think out an off-page strategy, and quite honestly I am wondering if I can get away without it at the moment.

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