SEO Review: May 7, 2012

Google’s new algorithm has been in place for over a week now, so let’s see how things have shaken out.

Joe’s SEO Campaign

Nine #1’s and 25 in the top 10, which is up one additional top 10 from last week.  Nine #1’a and 24 in the top 10, which is one less than last week.  However, we do have a phrase that moved up to #2 and another that moved up to #3.  The net gain this week was only +2, but again, we’ve got a lot of terms at the top.  There’s not a whole lot to report with Joe’s campaign, although I did happen to notice that he’s doing particularly well in Bing this week as well.

Now, normally I don’t look too much at Bing and  Yahoo.  I do track them, but since most people are interested in their Google rankings and that’s what I tend to do best, that’s where I focus my research and reporting efforts.  At any rate, looking through Joe’s Bing history I see a lot of Google dancing in it.  Bing dancing, if you prefer.  This week though, quite a few search phrases that were unranked a week ago are in the top 10.  For the record, there are 20 top 10 phrases in both Bing and Yahoo.

Eric’s SEO Campaign

You may recall that Eric made some massive gains after Google’s algo update last week.  While some of the search phrases have slipped some as, presumably, Google irons things out, Eric has three #1’s and 18 top 10’s.  It’s the same number as last week, though I think one term dropped out while another one came in.

One really great thing is that there are 35 search phrases we’re tracking for Eric, and this week all 35 of them are in the top 100.  Granted, some of them are on the fringes and that might not hold up, but it’s still pretty cool.  (Keep in mind that there’s a lot more focus on some search phrases than others.)

Josh’s SEO Campaign

Josh had some jumps and some drops this week, but again, the on-site content has remained unchanged for months.  An active site with fresh content couldn’t hurt.  At any rate, there are four in the top 10 with one at #1.  Last week one of the main search phrases was one of the #1’s, but this week one of them is at #3 and the other is at #4.

Nilesh’s SEO Campaign

Nilesh’s has a couple search phrases on his keyword optimized domain that took some huge hits over the last two weeks.  Several other search phrases attached to this domain also dropped, though not so dramatically, but everything seems to have leveled out and even started climbing back up again.  There are eight phrases in the top 10 with one of them ranked at #1.  The two that are not in the top 10 are at #26 and #50, but neither of those is a main target in the campaign.

The other domain continues to do very well.  The stats are similar: eight top 10’s and one #1, but the two outside of the top ten are both at #11, which is of course the top result on the second page.

Bryce’s SEO Campaign

Last week Bryce had five search phrases at #1 and three at #2.  This week one of those #2’s became a #1.  One phrase is at #11, another at #34 and there are two that are not ranked in the top 100.  As well as this campaign is going and as stable as it is, it might be time to start changing our focus.

Chad’s SEO Campaign

We seems to be hitting some consistency, as  the four phrases that were ranked this week are all ranked this week.  One slipped 11 spots, but the other three all made gains.  What I’m particularly proud of is that last week I was super excited about a search phrase cracking the top 10 so soon.  This week it’s at #8.

Larry’s SEO Campaign

I wish I hadn’t started Larry’s campaign when I did- right after Google’s algorithm update.  Let me clarify that: I wish I hadn’t started the off-site portion of his search engine optimization yet, or else I wish I’d been able to start it a week or two earlier.  The main reason is that I don’t really have a way of knowing how much my work has affected his rankings, speaking in particular about the main one.  The thing is, most of Larry’s rankings have gone down since we started the campaign.  Since the methods work (see all of the above), I don’t think we can put blame on that, but I can’t say for sure because I don’t really have enough data to tell for sure.

All that said, Larry’s got one #1 and three top 10’s.  He’s actually got a #1 Google image result too, which is kind of cool.  On that note, I just took a look at the results of a Google video search for his main keyword and he’s got several listed there.

The good news is that even if the benefit of the campaign isn’t showing up yet in Google, Larry’s site went up between 42 and 66 spots for half of his search phrases in Bing.

I might have to start getting people to use Bing more.