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January 2004
Search Engine Optimisation
Campaign
Everyone was talking about search engines when Yahoo bought
Overture. Whilst this was on everyone's topic of conversation
in the Industry, we thought it be only fair to start our very
own optimisation campaign.
Initially we did the competitor analysis bit and staked out
our work requirements by forming a base line.
After careful consideration we agreed amongst us that our
core task would be to build a new site from scratch.
We had the specific intention of proving to potential clients
that search engine optimisation is not just a buzz word and
really does work. The other thing we wanted to achieve was
to build a web site that struck the balance between cold realities
and providing non technical details for a business market
that was unsure of SEO.
In less than 5 weeks our new site was positioned number 3
on Yahoo out of 153,000 sites. We are ranked number 3 by Google
and other major search engines such as AOL.com and Go.com.
That was only part of it, whilst seeing sucess our positions
fluctuated between number 13 on Google.com to number 1, most
of the time we had a listing on number 2 of Google.co.uk.
We saw very good sucess for approx. 2-3 months, and proved
we had cracked it, then without warning one day all our efforts
appeared to be in vain. No surely not I hear you say, well
our position vanished overnight as quick as we got here- we
were nowhere to be seen. We went from position 9 on Google.com
to nothing over night, well we say nothing - we had researchers
looking in the first 500 listings but we could not find anything.
Other search terms were still in position 2, for instance
goto Google.com and type optimisation and you will see us
in position 2 fighting a competition of over 1.1 million websites.
Goto Google.com or Google.co.uk and search for search engine
optimisation - yes we disappeared from the rankings.....why?
- now that is the million dollor question. Our sources (a
list of experts) reported similar problems with other client
sites, why - no one knows, they can only speculate. What we
believe is that this was due to an unknown bug or other search
engine glitch.
Now thats is the hard facts about search engine optimisation
prgrams, if you have ever had a network go down or a bt connection
fail - you share in the frustration. Sometimes technical equipment
can go wrong, sometimes software goes wrong, sometime it's
down to human error. The question we then asked our team is
this - what if a client of another company (or worst still
our own) had paid money for optimisation and this happend?
What if an optimisation company offered pay for placement
and this happened? Well it would be just plain bad luck and
when you have an investment of time or money you have to take
a chance.
Unhappy that anyone should suffer from a technical glitch
we went into the meeting room and started brainstorming. (well
we are a reactive bunch as well as proactive) Not only brainstorming
we was also researching - lets find a solution to this problem
we said, lets find something does not put business or people
in this position. (PPC was the easy way out for us, although
this was useful it did not give us what we wanted) then we
came up with a solution.
In order to find out our solution you need to click here
Also you need to promise you will read the whole page first
:-)
Now our conclusion - their is pitfalls to search engine optimisation
and you should know of them. Please do not waste your money,
and find a contract that suits both parties. PPC is an excellent
concept, SEO is great - Internet Marketing is fantastic, what
we have found is that all of them work most of the time but
for a serious business you need a hybrid mix of them all.
Feel free to browse this web site for more information on
Search Engines and Optimisation, or you could on the other
hand, search the Internet.
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