SEO Review: July 9, 2012

My three-year-old will sometimes sit in my lap while I’m looking at my ranking graphs throughout the week.  When she looks at it she likes to say “Up and down, up and down.”  Of course, I like it when she says “up” more than she says “down”.

Joe’s SEO Campaign

Joe’s results are pretty similar to last week’s, with nine #1’s and 25 top 10’s (back up one from last week).  The social networking is in full swing and we should have the first article written for him this week.  In the following week we’ll add in some off-site work.

For most of the search phrases there was very little movement, +1 here, -1 there.  Outside of the top 30 we had a few drop from five to eleven spots, but we also had one jump up 35.

Eric’s SEO Campaign

We’re still at two #1 rankings with this campaign, but we lost two top 10’s for a total of 14.  For what it’s worth, three of them are at #11.

Eric’s site continues to be one of the most kinetic, with a lot of small movement all up and down the rankings, which has been par for the course pretty much since we started.  We did have two particularly big movers, one going up 50 and another 57 with both ending the week in the 20’s, but neither one is a search term that has been a huge focus for the site.

Nilesh’s SEO Campaign

Nilesh’s primary domain had two terms drop from #10 to #11 on his main domain, so for the first time in several weeks we don’t have all top 10 rankings for that domain.  Outside of that we had a few move down a spot and one move up to #1, our sole #1 for this domain for the week.  The secondary domain also had one #1 and seven top 10’s.  Two terms moved down two and three spots, but two others moved up two and 24 spots.

Nilesh will soon be restoring his old website design.  He voiced a concern to me that the new design wasn’t converting visits to leads.  I took a look at all the data and saw that even though the site was ranking better for all but one or two search terms, the traffic on the site had gone down, which lead me to believe that the searches for the terms for which his site is optimized have gone down.  I’ll be interested to see if changing back to the old site will indeed increase his conversions.

Bryce’s SEO Campaign

We’re back up to nine #1 rankings and are holding steady at 16 in the top 10, leaving only two search phrases that we’re tracking out of the top 10.  In fact though, one of those moved up 20 spots this week, which is the highest it’s been in over a month.  Outside of that, one term went down one spot, two moved up one and another moved up two.  Of course, when half of the terms are already ranked #1, there’s not going to be a whole lot more upward movement.

Bryce and I had a conversation about conversions last week as well.  In her case, traffic has steadily improved, peaking in May and falling a little short of that in June, but the site is on pace to get close to the record high of May.  My wife, who recently browsed a lot of online boutiques to look for a bridesmaid’s dress, had some good input on enhancements for this ecommerce site.  Based on these conversations, we added a different picture to the homepage sliders (more sales-oriented) and added the ability for customers to leave reviews on products they’ve purchased.  I also gave Bryce some tips on better utilizing her social networking efforts.  They do a great job in keeping on top of it and being active on Facebook and Twitter, but if they hone their techniques just a bit more I think it would be even more effective.

None of the above really had much to do with the search engine optimization itself, but I thought I’d mention it to underscore the point that ranking, while it can help drive the traffic, isn’t the be all and end all.  You’ve always got to look for more ways to improve the user experience.

Chad’s SEO Campaign

Chad’s #5 ranking has gone back down to #14 and only one other term is ranking right now.  What we need, desperately, is to overhaul the site and/or up the campaign to a higher level.

I’m pained about this situation.  I honestly care a lot about my clients’ business and want to see them do well, but we have SEO packages because there are a lot of different things one can do for SEO, and some people want to pay a certain amount and others are fine with paying more for more work.  I told Chad from the start that I wasn’t sure if a starter-level SEO package would be enough for his niche, and I think I’m right.  While we have occasional good results, it’s not enough to really be effective for his business.

Chad and I did continue discussing a website redo this past week, so we’ll see where that goes.

Larry’s SEO Campaign

Holding steady with four top 10’s and one #1.  We had a couple terms drop two spots and one drop one, but all other movement was upwards either one spot or five.

Danielle’s SEO Campaign

Danielle’s rankings, while decent for a pretty new site, are a little perplexing to me.  We’ve still got one #1 and four top 10’s, none of which moved at all from last week.  Outside of the top 10, one search phrase went up one, but all the rest dropped a few spots.  I think I might need to create additional pages for optimized content for this website.

Ben’s SEO Campaign

Ben’s campaign seems to finally be leveling off just a little bit.  A few search phrases in and out of the top 10 dropped a spot or six, mostly one or three, it seems, but a lot of them moved up as well, anywhere from one to 75 spots.  That said, we improved the #1 spots from 10 to 12.  Top 10 rankings increased from 54 to 58.

I’m still ecstatic about the progress of this site.  We’ve still got to write an article for the site this month and do some other off-site SEO, but I’ve mainly been waiting on things to settle a bit before moving to that phase.  The main reason for that is to help attribute efficacy to different techniques.  It’s funny how things that can make one site shoot up the rankings a ridiculous degree can seemingly have no effect on other sites, so I like to be able to sit back and analyze the effect different things have on a campaign.