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It isn’t easy to get to the top. It’s even harder to stay there… sometimes!

A few years ago we did some SEO work for Beautiful Fairhope. It was a custom site that provided a place for local (Fairhope, Alabama.) photographers to display their images of their town and the surrounding area.

Our client wanted us to optimize and, hopefully, get great placement, as in page one, first spot, for the following search terms:

pictures of Fairhope
photos of Fairhope
Fairhope pictures
Fairhope photos
Fairhope photographs
Fairhope photographers
Fairhope photography

and, if possible, they wanted to at least be on the first page for these two additional terms:

Fairhope, AL.
Fairhope, Alabama.

Of course we couldn’t guarantee anything but we took on the project. At the time returns ranged from several tens of thousands to several millions depending on which the first seven terms you checked. Fairhope AL gave up nearly a million returns and Fairhope Alabama nearly ten million.

We worked for a little over six months to get most of the first seven terms on page one and somewhat over twelve months to get the last two there. By the eighteen month point all terms were on the first page with all the photo, photographs, and pictures, ones in the first spot.

Fairhope AL and Fairhope Alabama were on the first page in position three behind the City of Fairhope website and Wikipedia’s entry for Fairhope. Those two would be pretty hard to beat for the such a broad term.

These were all pretty good results in the time expended.

The project ended and the client had us do nothing more for a little over a year. The client himself added periodic, though less than regular, pictures and text updates. after a dozen months results for some of the terms saw the site had slipped to page two. The city/state terms had dropped to the third page. SEO is not permanent. Two new players were occupying multiple positions on the first page. It was getting competitive.

We were called back in and did just one major thing. We converted the site from the custom package that had been in place since before our original product to a new WordPress CMS site. We transferred over the existing content and made only minor adjustments to the WordPress package.

The focus of the site changed slightly as well. Where the original site featured photographers by name the new site dropped this content and added local information about the city and the region. The client began a regular process of adding new pictures and making regular blog posts.

In less than three months the site had bounced back to first page for all the search terms with five of the seven photo terms being in the first spot, the city/state terms being once again in the third spot and only Fairhope photography and Fairhope photographers being down the page (4 and 7 respectively).

These were great results.

For almost another year now site has remained solidly in the positions for those search terms for which it was originally optimized and now additionally finds itself on the first few pages for several new desired keywords that have been used in content but for which the site has neither been optimized nor has any off-site SEO or social media marking (SMM) been done.

A solid foundation is always a good place to start. A system with history is good. WordPress is also a very good good choice for SEO, visitor comfort, and ease of management. Regular, new, relevant, content is great and WordPress makes this easy. The results since the change to WordPress have been excellent!

Lora and I may be hired to work our magic on the site in respect of the new search terms the client is exploring but either way we’ll be keeping an eye on this site.

Getting to the top of the search results is important, of course. Additionally, though, it helps to have more spots on the first page than just one. Let’s look at returns on Google for custom dog figurines, one of the more common search terms in the dog gifts industry.

As we can see on the screen capture (link above), with a little less than 70 thousand returns, Dog Lover Store is in the second position on the first page. That’s very good. But they are also on of three sites included in the Shopping Results special section which is also very good.

Additionally Dog Lover Store is represented on the first page, sixth spot, by their blog site, http://msmosites.com/dogloverstore/. This means they control two of the ten regular spots and have a featured place in the special section. Having more than one site can be very helpful. You can provide relevant back links and control additional spots on the SERPs.

Keep this in mind when deciding on your online business strategy.

I get spam emails all the time promising me just that: first place on page one. Of course, no one can honestly promise first page results for almost any keyword. Unless you have a very good site in a very obscure niche it’s going to be a fight to the top and many just won’t make it. Remember, there are only ten spots on the first page of any Google search return and there are thousands, even millions, of sites working hard for there place in one of those spots. Even if you get to the first page there will be just as many sites trying to take the spot from you. It sucks but that’s reality.

The thing is, with the right effort, over time, your site can be on the first page of Google (or awfully close to it). It does take work and you need to know what you are doing. You can likely get there but no one can guarantee it. In this post and the next two I’m going to look at some specific examples.

First, let’s consider this e-commerce venue (mall) site, Main Street Mall Online and lets see how it fairs in a Google search for the term main street mall. (Hint: click that last link to see a screen capture of the search results at the time of writing this post)

“Of course,” you might say, “if you search for your own business name it will come up at or near the top of the first page. Duh!” Well, maybe not. Note first that I am searching for main street mall, just three words, not the four words in the business name, main street mall online. See below for more information.

There are seven points marked with red arrows on that image. I’ll discuss each one in turn working from the top down.

1) there are nearly 8 million returns for these four words. Now, not all of those returns will have all four three words, nor will the words they do have be together in the same order because I didn’t put them in quotation marks or parentheses in my query string. There are a bunch, though, that do have all three words together in the same order. It shows one thing: you need to consider your business name when opening an online busienss!

2) the home page for mainstreetmallonline.com (the target of this excercise) is in the first spot on page one. That’s not too bad.

3) but not only is it in the first spot on page one there is a link just below it that says More results for mainstreetmallonline.com and clicking on that link (the one in the search or the one here) opens another page with over 5000 returns. Most of those are pages on that domain (on that site) that have been indexed. More than 5000 pages. That’s not too bad, either.

4) the second spot on the first page is held by the sub-directory site that is one of the malls (Sewing, Needlework, Patterns & Fabric) that comprise the Main Street Mall Online site.

5 & 6) the sixth and seventh spots are held by mainstreetvintage.com which is a domain name mapped directly to one of the sub-directory sites that is also one of the malls (Vintage Clothing & Accessories).

What’s the point of all this? Simply that despite the number of main street mall returns in search engine results pages (SERPs) it is possible not only to get to the first spot on the first page but to control four out of the ten spaces on the first page… and more.

This is a fairly easy example but, as you’ll see in my next post it can happen for more specific key words in an equally saturated marketplace.

7) and one more thing: the last return on the first page has the domain name main-street-mall.com which speaks to the myth that word-separating dashes in your domain name are critical to your success on Google (or other search engines). This particular site is on the first page, but it is beaten out for the top nine positions by other sites, some of which don’t even have the search term in the domain name.

SEO is a matter of many small pieces of a very large puzzle all coming together over time. I like to think of it as a dance, a ballet if you will, wherem sure, the prima is important but so are all the others including the chorus. If any are missing it is not complete but many parts could be missing without bringing the show to a close. And most of the individual dancers think, incorrectly, that they are the one that will make all the difference. They forget one key thing: most parts have an understudy.

SEO is a lot like that.

I keep hearing horror stories of people spending huge sums on SEO and getting nothing for it. I sometimes pick up clients who have been through this experience and I see nothing, or very little, on their websites to indicate any real SEO program was ever undertaken on their behalf.

So what’s the real story? SEO, after all, is made up of two broad components, on site and off site. Generally the whole program isn’t worth much if the on site part isn’t taken care of first. And taken care of correctly.

I also hear people talking about their fears of being penalized and blocked from Google if they do this one thing or that one thing, mostly innocuous things that have little or no bearing on their SEO efforts at all. Most often they are quoting purported axioms they have picked up on discussion forums posted by wannabe SEO experts who have only learned the same worn out myths and urban legends.

There are things to be concerned about, things you should do, things you need to do, things you shouldn’t do, and even a few that may get you penalized, but mostly the only penalty you will experience, especially if you only do the right things, is finding yourself not as far up the pages as you would have hoped. And typically this lack of performance is simply because you aren’t doing enough of the right things, often enough, and over a long enough period of time.

The first, and probably the most important thing you should learn about SEO is that it is not a one time thing. It is not a quick fix. It is a process that takes time. You should expect to sped up to six months of seriously applied positive (white hat) activity before seeing any serious results and up to a year of sustained application before your results are secure.

The second thing you need to know is that SEO is a never ending story. It requires some application all the time, each month at least, for as long as you will keep your website. Without it you will slip from the first page and, perhaps, out of sight. The good news is that most of the on-going SEO, after the first, intensive, six months to a year, is easy and you can do it yourself.

You can also do all the heavy lifting yourself, if you like. There is nothing in the SEO process that is mystical, magic, or something you cannot actually do yourself, though many SEO professionals want you to think there is. It is, however, often cheaper to hire it done; not only in raw dollar cost but also in regard to the impact it will have on other areas of your business if you spend the time learning and delivering good SEO over the necessary six months to a year period it will take to be successful.

My next three posts will deal with three particular cases that show some interesting issues and important information in the SEO process.

For many years now I have been creating custom websites, eBay listing templates, About Me pages, and other HTML-coded pages for a variety of uses. From single listing templates, custom template filler forms, full eBay identity packages, to websites of every sort, working with individuals and other web hosting companies I have created thousands of web documents over the years.

I can create custom a listing template template to match your existing WordPress (or other) website or a custom WordPress theme to match your existing eBay store or listing template. Or I can create an entire multi-venue online identity package.

WAHMS Helper – Premium Coffee Roasters – Vintage Home Arts

I would be pleased to quote on your specific needs for a WordPress website, listing template, e-commerce identity package, custom website, or other web pages.

I’ve often said there are four things a person should have if they are going to sell online:

1 – their own domain name
2 – their own website even if they aren’t going to sell from it
3 – an eBay account
4 – an account on at least one other venue

These days there are a lot of good sellers leaving eBay because they have been caught in the DSR trap and lost the ability to get the lower listing price in the second tier store package. Often these sellers are angry, fed up with eBay, and cut all ties with the venue that previously was their primary source of income.

With reference to the don’t put all your eggs in one basket adage it is certainly better to have options in place before push comes to shove but even for those who don’t, cutting and running may be the worst approach. eBay can still be a valuable market for the seller who migrates most of their business elsewhere.

eBay does have a lot of traffic and it is still the biggest player in the venue market. To cut ties with them is the proverbial cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. Far better to keep a presence and at least make use of the numerous free services eBay offers. The forums are a great place to keep in touch and promote your business — indirectly, of course — and About Me pages are a potentially powerful advertising vehicle. Auction listings, for the member without a store are free and 30 day fixed price listings are still cheap, if not as cheap as they once were. An eBay account is a great way to get exposure for your off-eBay business.

But way another venue? Simple: people shop at other venue. Sometimes people who shop at other venues don’t shop at eBay. It’s just one more avenue of exposure. You really should list your items — at least some of them — at one or more of the many venues available in the marketplace today. Those that offer free listings provide, if nothing else, free advertising for your business. Those that allow you to link to your website are even better.

Main Street Mall Online is one of those places that provide free listings (the free mini-store offers ten completely free listings — no store rental, no listing fee, no final sales commission — FREE!) and allows you, indeed encourages you, to link to your own website. That’s a link for people to follow end a back link from a relevant site for SEO. Certainly w

I’ve seen a lot of discussion on various forums about the power of being part of a venue or community vs. having a stand-alone website. Often the thrust of the comments seems to be that a site like eBay is important because they bring millions of people to the site daily so your items will be seen, whereas having your own website leaves you out in the cold, all alone to find for yourself.

I beg to differ. There are advantages to communities and venues if they provide a way for your listings to be found easily by visitors but many don’t. Often venues are more about getting new sellers (their customers) to the site and less about providing a way for you to be found. I’ve seen venues and so-called community sites that have no mechanism for displaying a list of sellers or for searching for a seller by name, business name, or email address — all of these are important ways a seller could be found.

In particular, for most categories these days, eBay has so many listings and their search is so skewed in favor of key sellers (read “big”) that your listings are often never seen. It doesn’t matter how many visitors a site has in total. What matters to YOU is how many people actually see YOUR listing(s). Put a counter on your eBay listings and see how many hits you get. No one has have shown me a listing with a million or more viewers, or even close to that. Most listings are lucky if they get 100 hits. Sixty million, or whatever the daily traffic number is at eBay is meaningless.

So where do websites come in. Well, first of all, today’s websites are more affordable and offer many more features and functions. WordPress, my personal favorite, is a powerful, feature-rich, content management system for creating both information and e-commerce websites. But traditionally having your own website has meant being out there all alone. And that means little or no traffic.

Not any more. WordPress is an excellent base from which to build an Internet presence. It is very SEO friendly right out of the box and extremely easy to extend for top notch SEO response with an array of excellent plug-ins for the purpose.

But you can go one step further. Find a good, niche market, venue or community site that supports, and promotes, website categories and will help put your site on the map. Harness the power of a like-minded, product specific, group of sites to gain extended exposure and better placement in the search engine return pages (SERPs).

With the right package you can do better — significantly better — than you have done on eBay, and you can do it cheaper — significantly cheaper — than you have likely been paying for listings that haven’t been selling.

I’m interested in hearing from people who are interested in an affordable website that is easy to use and will be part of a niche-market or merchandise-specific community of sites.

With the release of WordPress 3.0 (now in v3.0.1 release) WordPress MU became an integrated part of the standard WordPress code base. At the time of initial installation we can now choose which style of WordPress we want to run: single site stand-alone mode or multi-site network mode. Along with this choice comes a little confusion in what we should be calling things.

We need some clarification in the terminology that has sprung up over the years as WordPress has grown and matured. Originally WordPress was a blog. That was easy. Then it gained the ability to add pages and other non-blog content. Was it still just a blog or was it actually a website? Then came extended content and the associated management facilities. Was it just a website or was it a true content management system (CMS)? Now it has single site or a multiple site capability withing the single installation.

So is it now multi-site or do we continue to think of each website as a blog? And what’s all this network stuff? WordPress now refers to the multi-user (MU) capabilities of the latest WordPress package as a network, as in “network of blogs or websites”. Sure, WordPress can still be installed and used as just a blog — some blog! — but it is more often than not installed as a complete multi-page, multi-function, website; a full content management system. And, when you expand the installation to support multiple,simultaneous, individual, independent, websites or content management systems, then the term network certainly applies.

The term website or just site is, I believe, preferable to blog for an individual installation. The term network is great for an installation comprised of multiple websites under a single WordPress umbrella. As we move ahead with the new structures these terms will become more common place and more comfortable in normal use.

But whatever you call it, WordPress is undoubtedly the very best choice for many varied website needs. I’ll be glad to help you decide how to best utilize it for your specific online needs.

If you aren’t already using WordPress v3 you should be!

From Andrew Nacin on the WordPress site July 29, 2010

After nearly 11 million downloads of WordPress 3.0 in just 42 days, we’re releasing WordPress 3.0.1. The requisite haiku:

Three dot oh dot one
Bug fixes to make you smile
Update your WordPress

“This maintenance release addresses about 50 minor issues. The testing many of you contributed prior to the release of 3.0 helped make it one of the best and most stable releases we’ve had.”

Download 3.0.1 or update automatically from the Dashboard –> Updates menu in your WordPress site’s admin area.

I’m often asked about a good beginner’s book for WordPress. There are so many good books that offer good information at so many levels that it is hard to pick just one. If you are just starting out, however, and want a good overview then Lisa Sabin-Wilson’s WordPress For Dummies is a good choice.

Generally I just don’t like the For Dummies series of books for the implicit put-down the title conveys but, getting past that, this book is a comprehensive guide to getting started with, and using, WordPress. It is well written and easy to understand.

The author is thoroughly versed in her subject and presents practical advice in an easy-to-follow manner making this book an excellent step-by-step guide to WordPress. It also offers a selection of places you can go to find additional resources.

Topics covered include plug-ins (extensions to the basic WordPress system), hosting your own stand-alone system, themes (both selection and development) and migrating your blog from an existing site.

You won’t go wrong with this book.