Blackwood SEO Update

What we've learnt after one month of optimising the Mi website

Search Engine Optimisation can be a long and drawn out process especially if the site in question is in a competitive business sector. Unlike pay per click, results are not instant and involve processes that take time for the full benefits to be realised. One of the key factors that must be considered from day one is that any work carried out on a site must be seen to be natural, too much too soon can cause harm and result in our friends at Google and alike penalising your efforts.

With any campaign before any work is carried out it is important that my team and I get under the skin of our clients in an effort to understand what the expectations are. It is often said that SEO companies can guarantee page 1, position 1, within search engines. While there is an element of truth in this statement, the reality is that this can only be achieved at a cost. For Blackwood Productions this cost has to be balanced against the effort required and the finances that clients are prepared to commit. Two of the most desired keywords for any company involved in my business are "SEO" or "Search Engine Optimisation". I am often asked why if Blackwood Productions are as good as we say we are we are not on the first page of Google. Well the reality is that in our opinion the cost to achieve this does not justify the potential return.

It has now been six weeks since we accepted Brad's offer to optimise the Millionimpossible website. Having gained an understanding of what his business was all about, our initial steps involved analyses with a view to making recommendations that will ensure the site is search engine friendly. In addition for our reference and that of the client we documented the relative positions within the search engines of their desired keywords, the volume of traffic visiting site and mapped both outbound and inbound links. On a positive note, after phase 1 analyses the site appeared to have been well written, the code was strong W3C compliant with H1 tags and content appeared to be rich. Initial recommendations involved the creation of unique Meta title and description tags for each page but in truth I was pleased to see that the fundamental design was strong. The only negatives were the keywords, in short some were massively competitive and all but a few were not listed within the first 10 pages of Google, Yahoo or MSN. This was not going to be easy, Brad will not talk to me and my reputation would be highlighted in his many forums and open to public ridicule!

Undaunted, over the first few weeks, the challenge gathered momentum as keyword rich content was added to the site and the implementation of both reciprocal and relevant one way inbound links. Directory and article submissions would take time but in essence our rule of thumb is based on ethical practices that are natural: > Add > Wait > Review > Amend > Add.

So we waited and we waited and we waited, surely after 6 weeks based on our experience of campaigns for other companies we would see some positive movement, but to my surprise very little. Yes more inbound links had been indexed and yes their Alexa rank had improved but the relative positions of their keywords had hardly changed. This would be expected for their competitive keywords but some were not and should have moved. Something was wrong, why were the search engines not rewarding our best efforts? The SEO nightmare had happened, was it something we had done, had Google reviewed the site and found something they didn't like, the site is still live so it's not all bad but it was not good.

This was a week ago and since that initial shock a further deep analyses has been undertaken on the Million Impossible website which we think has identified the problem. In my previous article I mentioned that one of the key elements that enables sites to out rank their competitors is the owner's ability to include good quality content. Content is king but it must be both relevant and above all UNIQUE! Plagiarism and duplication is rife on the internet and Google will penalise sites if they feel you are doing this. To my horror The Business Networking article displayed on their home page had been replicated by MI, in good faith or ignorance, on a number of sites. In addition the home page contained a large quantity of low value outbound links many of which were "no follow". It was my belief that these two factors were having an adverse effect on their rankings and thus should be changed immediately.

So after 6 weeks hopefully we have identified a minor glitch, which as we speak is being rectified. Brad assures me that the "new" MI home page will be up and running next week enabling the ADD>WAIT>REVIEW process to start all over again.