Simplify the Web

Now that we have our first experiment running full steam ahead, let's step up and take on a bigger challenge. Search Engine Optimization seems to be what we are talking about and which Tony makes a great discussion point about in our first ongoing experiment.

Our point is very simple; with all of the companies out there offering Search Engine Optimization as a service to clients, there are many websites that just very simply don't need SEO, yet. If companies would spend some simple time editing the designs of sites and following very simple approaches to compliant design and development, then "Search Engine Optimization" as we know it today would be unnecessary.

Design a great site, make it compliant, clean up the hundreds of lines of Javascript in your web page and you may find that your site starts working better for you and stops getting in its own way. The number one enemy in competing for traffic today seems to be yourself if you have a poorly designed site.

So, without further adieu we are going to step up and toss our hat in the ring and see what we can do with a more difficult challenge, Search Engine Optimization. A simple phrase that Thousands want to be found and tens of thousands want help with, can we make it in the first 1000 results or is it going to take more effort than our first experiment? Stay tuned and we'll let you know!

It's about time for another follow-up on the original Search Engine Optimization experiment. The phrase? Easy Blog Integration. The task? To raise our rank for that search phrase from below 1000 to the first page of search results. The reason? To make sure we actually know what we're doing.

We don't have any clients who pay us for Search Engine Optimization. We keep telling them that they don't need SEO. Why? Because: if your website has good code and good content, people will be able to find you. Most people don't need any special techniques to be ranked well. Tony has been making websites since 1999 and has hundreds of case studies to show that most SEO is utterly unnecessary.

So, rather than simply believe that we're good at what we do, we decided to test ourselves. We chose a phrase related to our flagship product: easy blog integration. We searched Google, Yahoo, and MSN (the 'big three' search engines) and found that we weren't in the top 1000 websites for that search. We then wrote a post about this experiment, and waited.

After 10 days, we were #1 on Yahoo. We were shocked.

What does it look like today?

We're #3 out of 15,800,000 websites on Google.

We're #15 out of 65,100,000 websites on Yahoo.

We're #1 out of 13,000,000 websites on MSN.

Who cares? You should. Almost every website exists to 'get the word out'. If people can't find you by searching for what you do, you're wasting time and resources. Don't spend money on SEO. Don't spend money on pay-per-click ads. Start with good code and quality content, and use those two - usually expensive - techniques to augment your results.

What we do works. We write excellent HTML code, and give you the ability to edit your own website without messing that up. Search engines love us, and they would love you as well...if you let us help you.

A simple phrase that many are trying to be found. Denver Real Estate is a term that many agents in the Denver area are trying to be found in the result pages for the Internet. We are going to stage another experiment in Searh Optimization by simply writing about Denver Real Estate.

We searched online in the top 1000 positions for Denver Real Estate and found us lacking in all major search engines for the phrase. Google, Yahoo, and MSN have nothing linking to us for the phrase. So, with nothing more than simply writing this post optimized around the phrase Denver Real Estate we start our next project.

Can we be found in the search results online for Denver Real Estate? Stick around, we'll let you know as soon as we notice the page results!

It's been just over a month. I forgot to check the listings four days ago, and just remembered.

What am I talking about? It's an experiment in Search Engine Optimization that we dubbed Easy Blog Integration. Yes, I know it's not that creative. You can read the original article, and you can read the first follow-up. Essentially, Thomas and I decided to test our theory that we're just as good as - or better than - Search Engine Optimization professionals. Not at doing busy work or creating reports with pivot tables, but at getting a web page ranked highly by a search engine.

The phrase is "easy blog integration". In only 10 days, DotComOnomics went from below 1,000 to #1 on Yahoo for that search phrase. Google at that time didn't have us ranked. Well, they do now. We're currently #6:

As before, click the small image to view a larger one. Just because I was curious, I also checked MSN. We're currently #1 on MSN for the phrase easy blog integration:

It looks like our experiment was a success. With a single blog post, we raised our search rank for a specified keyphrase from nowhere to the front page...and the post wasn't stuffed with keywords. It's readable and meaningful because I wrote it without intending it to be the source of traffic. Thomas never actually wrote the "landing page", but we got the results we wanted nonetheless.

If you've been wondering how to get your website ranked higher than it is now, we can almost certainly help.

10 days. That's all it took to move DotComOnomics from >1,000 to #1. What am I talking about? I'm talking about a Search Engine Optimization experiment that started on May 14, 2008...eleven days ago.

At the time, DotComOnomics wasn't in the top 1,000 results on either Google or Yahoo for the phrase "easy blog integration". There were 2 million results on Google and 51 million on Yahoo, and we were nowhere to be found. Our flagship product, PageProLive, allows us to integrate a blog into virtually any existing website's design...so this is an experiment that hits close to home.

I told you in Part 1 that Thomas would be writing a 'landing page' designed to attract search engines...and that we'd report on the traffic to that page. Well, that page never got written. The only thing written was the post, about the experiment. That's the page that's #1 on Yahoo. Click on the image to see a larger version...it's really Yahoo, and we're really number one.

We jumped no fewer than 1,000 positions in 10 days or less by writing a single article on our blog. It's not an amazing article...it's pretty good, but it's not up for a Pulitzer or anything. The key is - as we always teach - good content and great code. Search engines love websites that are well-done...and the code generated by the PageProLive system is well-done. We haven't even checked Google to see if Part 1 is even in their index yet...we assumed that it would take a few weeks.

In other words, the PageProLive system hasn't just met our expectations...it's exceeded them by a large margin. Honestly, I expected to jump to 300-400 in about three weeks, and to steadily climb to the top 20 during the month after that. Imagine your own website performing this well: whatever you write about would probably get more attention than anything your competitors are doing. That's why we built it: so that anyone can edit their own website AND have a site with high-quality, search-engine-friendly code. It's the best of both worlds.

Please feel free to contact us if you have questions about PageProLive. It may be the right solution for you.