SEO Project #1 – SEO – Not For The Weak At Heart – Update #18

Previous Post For This Project

It's been nearly a month since I posted about this project. It hasn't been because I haven't been busy working on it. 4 weeks ago, my main keyword made it to Page 1 Position 3 on Google. I was elated. I was expecting a cool 2,000 - 3,000 visitors each month from that one keyword. This lasted for a few days. Then it happened.

My keyword disappeared from the search. I wasn't worried. Matter of fact, I seen it as a good sign. Let me explain.

I started off ranking for Google on page 5. Every time my keyword would disappear, it would always return within 2 - 3 days and would gain ranking. I seen this happen at least 4 - 5 times as I moved from page 5 to page 1. So when my keyword disappeared from Page 1 Position 3, I was expecting it to return to Page 1 Position 2 or even Position 1. This unfortunately wasn't the case.

It took nearly a week for my keyword to return and it moved to position 18. You know the difference between position 18 and not ranking at all? Not much.

I couldn't figure out what was going on. I haven't done anything black hat. It has been a very frustrating few weeks. I've considered just dumping this project and forgetting about trying to rank anything. Maybe I'm not cut out for SEO.

After hitting a 10 on the frustration level, I spent some time over at the private member forums at SEO Book. I got some good perspective on what was going on.

Here are two theories that I found most probable.

1. One member commented that my site may have never been a true Page 1 Position 3 rank. It seems to be common knowledge that Google will sometimes "audtion" sites for the top spots. Then they monitor the bounce rate to determine if your site fits at the top of the list.

I'm not 100% sold that this is the issue with my site. I'm running Google Analytics on the site and compared to the benchmark data, my site is well above average when it comes to page views per visitor, bounce rate, and on site time.

2. Aaron Wall commented "to me it sounds like you need some higher quality links...a backlink profile of this combination

• free directories
• article directories
• blog comments
• a few sitewides

is likely to be spam 9 times out of 10. maybe do a few guest columns and submit to some of the better paid directories."

Aaron went on to comment that I should consider submitting my site to some of the higher quality paid directories. It looks like Aaron was right. Read my next post for the full update.

I've received quite an education since starting this project. I've learned a lot. So much so, that I can now see mistakes I made with my keyword selection. Luckily, it was salvageable and I've been able to make the corrections without any drastic site changes.

One of the most important things I've learned is that SEO doesn't come easy. It takes a lot of work and planning and the most frustrating thing for me is the results don't happen overnight.

Posted by: Brent Crouch on 03 Aug, 2008No Comments »