[04/01/2008]
AuraDev launches Search Engine Optimization strategy for itself.
AuraDev started a search engine optimization campaign for
itself in March 1 2008.
Our past search engine optimization campaign was heavily
targeted to Portland. We choose keywords like Portland Web
Design and Portland Web Hosting, because at the time we felt
that those types of keywords would be what our ideal customer
would use.
What we found was that our ideal customer is not actually
in Portland. We much prefer to work with companies in
the SW and SE suburbs of Portland, specifically and in order
of preference: Wilsonville, Canby, Lake Oswego, Tualatin,
West Linn, Oregon City, Tigard and Beaverton. (Nothing personal
Beaverton, we just don't like traveling).
Once we identified the locale of our ideal customer, AuraDev
began to identify keywords then modify them with a locality.
One keyword "Web Design" for example becomes eight,
just by adding the city name to the front. It then doubles
to 16 by adding the city name to the back.
10 services X 8 cities X 2 variations of where the city name
is placed = 160 Unique pages of search engine optimized content
that needs to be written, in addition to the 12 normal web
pages, of which not all are written.
SEO is a process, it's time consuming and shouldn't
be looked at as a one time thing. AuraDev advises clients
to spread out search engine marketing efforts over the entire
year, which could mean focusing one one keyword every week.
But the results do add up. The beautiful thing about search
engine optimization is that each page adds to the next, and
after a period of time, you will have hundreds of content
pages. Most websites have 10 pages. This is a huge mistake,
it is extremely hard to perform well on search engines with
such limited content.
For our Search Engine Optimization strategy we are creating
one page for each keyword. This involves identifying our core
set of keywords, creating the permutations with city name
in front or in back, then writing unique content for each
keyword and creating a web page for each keyword. This is
incredibly time consuming, so we made a goal to focus one
hour a day.
After 30 days the results are starting to pay off,
here is a screen shot of our Analytics.
In 30 days we have more than doubled our both our
visits to to our website and our page views.
One thing that is worth noting is that our pages per visit
did not change.
This is a good thing- we brought more people to our
website through search engine optimization WITHOUT decreasing
the average amount of pages the visitors viewed. This is an
indication of high quality visitors.
Unfortunately the bounce rate is creeping up, this means
visitors are looking at one page on our website and then leaving.
Normally this would be an indication that the content of the
landing pages isn't as relevant as it could be, but in our
case, since there are not very many pages in the website,
it is more of an indication that we need to continue to write
pages that are targeted for each keyword. This is because
Analytics is showing us that most people are coming in on
the homepage still (in the next step we will try to get them
to come in on pages specifically targeted to the keyword they
use).
Average time on the site has also decreased- and indication
of content that isn't interesting. We need to focus on things
that are interesting that will convert a visitor to a customer.
The new visits metric isn't particularly applicable at this
point. At this point it doesn't matter to us if someone is
viewing our website for the first time or returning to read
more.
The next step is to use the Google Keyword tool to generate
a list of keywords that potential customers would use to find
our website, and then modify them with the eight cities we
are targeting. Stay tuned for next months release where we
will report our success and failures.
Wilsonville
Search Engine Optimization
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