Here is a case study of the revenue that a client achieved by optimizing a single keyword that moved from the bottom of the second page of Google to a number 4 position, above the fold on the first page.

A client’s website had a ranking of 18 for their primary target keywords on the second page of Google’s natural search engine results. Considering how many marketers are competing for the top positions for this keyword, appearing on the second page of search results seemed a like an accomplishment, but we thought that it could be better.

SEO Works

We focused our optimization efforts on improving the natural keyword ranking for this one target keyword. Eventually, the ranking for the keyword first moved to the number 9 position, and then to the number 4 position of the first page search engine results. The improved search engine ranking for this single keyword generated an increase in sales leads far more than expected, which subsequently converted to an increase in sales revenue amounting to over $1,000,000.

Tracking the Moves

The list below shows the search engine ranking relative to the number of sales leads that were generated from the company’s primary target keyword:

• Nov 08 – position 18 = 6 leads
• Dec 08 – position 9 = 31 leads
• Jan 09 – position 9 = 126 leads
• Feb 09 – position 4 = 102 leads
• Mar 09 – position 4 = 207 leads
• Apr 09 – position 4= 221 leads

Summary of Results

The increase in the number of monthly sales leads can be seen as the target keyword ranking moved up over the six month time period. The full benefit of the keyword moving from the 18^th to the 9^th position is reflected in the January total because the change occurred later in the month of December. The same applies to the move from position 9 to position 4 because the change occurred later in February.

For marketing managers and business owners who are wondering about the difference between having a major keyword listing on the first page of search results compared to the second page of results, this case study should provide some insight based on our experience.

It also shows an example of the potential benefit from having keyword search results listed above the fold of a web page as opposed to below the fold where viewers must scroll down to see more search listings.

Based on these results, there is clear evidence that a higher organic search engine ranking can dramatically affect sales lead generation and company revenue, in this case over ,000,000.

Wriiten by Rick Smith: Online Marketing Agency, Newspaper SEO, Auto Dealer SEO.

For the aveage Webmaster, SE Optimization is something akin to black magic. As a SEO in Houston it’s my belief that a lot of this is because of all the B.S. spouted out by a lot of SEO companies and individuals. For some, this is because they don’t have any idea what they’re talking about while many others do it because their Clients would stop paying them if they knew how easy it was to rank a web site. Search Engine Optimization is not rocket science my good friend. It’s nothing more than systematically building and optimizing a website the same way over and over to achieve high rankings.

You want to get off to a good start. To begin with, the person in charge of obtaining the domain should make certain keywords are part of the web address if at all possible. All things being equal, a web page with keywords in the address will rank higher than one without the keywords in the domain name.

Now that you have that done, the keyword or keyword phrase should be added in the Website’s Title. This helps search engines like Yahoo figure out what subject your site is covering.

Your keywords should also be used as the Title of each page also, or at the bare minimum, you should use some keywords in the title of the page or article. This also helps the search engines determine what the subject of the page is, what it’s about and how relevant it is to the search term being searched for. As an added benefit, the Website or Blog should be designed so that the Page Title is in the H1 tag. Search engines rely a great deal on the H1 to tell them what the page is about and how relevant it is. If your Houston web designer does not know how to do this, find one that does.

If you have that done, it’s crucial that the keywords you want to rank for show up a few times in the content of the page. For best results, you should place the main keyword of the page somewhere in the first paragraph and several more times througout the article depending on the length. It’s also important to put it near the end of the page or article. A few more times between the first and last paragraph can’t hurt but don’t over do it, in summary, just make sure you use them in the beginning and end.

Lastly, you’ll soon discover that the most important part of SEO actually takes place off site. In my opinion, the most important thing in obtaining a higher ranking is backlinks going back to your Web page. And it’s not enough to just get backlinks, these backward links need to have your keywords as the Anchor text of the links back to your site.

How important are backward links? Well, I can rank a website that doesn’t have the keywords in the domain, one that doesn’t have keywords in the Website Title, Page Title and in the Content (although it’s much, much harder to do), but without anchored links back to your site going to your web page, {it is almost impossible} to get ranked higher for any terms that are the least bit competitive.

There are a number of steps I always follow when optimizing a site for SEO (note these are just the high points, there are others that I don’t mention here, but these WILL take you a long way):

1) For a new site, I will include the keywords in a non hyphenated domain name (if you can get a .edu or .gov suffix do so, otherwise a cheap .info will be ok)

2) If possible, I will rename the URL to each SEO relevant page to include the main keyword for that page.

3) Implement Google Analytics for the site and ensure the tracking script is added to every page (if not already done).

4) Go through the “money” pages and make sure that the title, meta descriptions and meta keywords tags are unique and optimized for the keywords on the page. In a competitive niche (over 1 million result pages in Google), I would limit the keywords to one main phrase, a couple of local modifiers and one or two more closely related terms per page.

5) Re-visit the non-money pages (i.e. pages that are irrelevant from an SEO perspective) and ensure the title and meta description tags are not duplicates of any of the money page tags. Google Webmaster tools will identify this for you once your site has been registered.

6) I also nofollow any links to overhead pages from all of the pages on the site with the exception of the home page. I leave the home page links as follow links, since I want the SEs to index all pages on the site and having privacy, contact, disclaimer, etc overhead pages add to Google’s view of the “trust” for the site. On all other pages I want only the link to the home page to be a follow link, so I can build up the page rank of the home page. I handle this in Dreamweaver by using two different site templates, one for the home page and one for the rest of the pages on the site. If your main keyword page is something other than the home page, modify your approach accordingly.

7) I then optimize each pages content for it’s main keywords, modifiers and related terms. It’s important that each word or phrase used in the keyword META is found on the page to avoid keyword spam penalties.

At this point the on page optimization is complete enough to start with link building. As you may already know, building links is not an easy process. I use articles, blog posts, submit forms on relevant sites, reciprocal links, etc. There are ways to short cut this process, without going black or even grey hat. Contact me at Mississauga Search Engine Marketing if interested.