« It’s Leap Day! It’s Leap Day! Success To Me – Clay Nichols »

What They Don’t Tell You About SEO – Part 2
Mar 3 2008

Billiard Cupcakes – Photo by PinkCakeBox (flickr)
billiards-pinkcakebox.jpgAs a follow on to my What They Don’t Tell You About SEO – Part 1 post, here goes Part 2.

So now we are about 2 ½ months and 3 ½ payments into Search Engine Optimization with SpryDev.  We’ve made several changes to our site based on some great recommendations by Brian Massey at Customer Chaos and now we wait and measure the results.  We have seen an increase in trial account sign ups and a few more sales, but I’m still waiting for the landslide! 🙂

I know it is sometimes an experimental process with keyword selection, and I know since we aren’t selling cupcakes (i.e., a well understood product) that things might take a little longer.  I know all of this and yet I still want (dare I say need) to see those results immediately because I’m fundraising.  With every presentation I make, the more users I can tell potential investors have signed up, the more compelling the story becomes and the chances of getting funding increase ever so slightly.  Sort of a + b = c stuff.  Sometimes those tiny incremental changes can make all the difference.

I was reading some blogs and came across a neat tool called Website Grader that tells you how your website ranks with regards to SEO.  Social Media Mom mentioned it and when I ran the tool a distant memory was triggered because I was sure I had seen reference to this site before and lo and behold Pearl at Interesting Observations had mentioned it back in October 2007!  I can’t remember the score I had on my blog when I ran it then, but I ran a report for both http://www.babblesoft.com/ and http://entrepremusing.wpengine.com/ and here are the results:

Babble Soft

Score: 67 out of 100 (a D grade – wah!)

Google PageRank: 5

Google Indexed Pages: 66

Last Google Crawl Date: February 25, 2008

Traffic Rank: Top 8.01%

Inbound Links: 2,815

I also discovered we were not yet listed in the Yahoo! Directory but that has since been corrected and now we are.  We are still waiting for DMOZ and ZoomInfo to acknowledge our submissions.  I know SpryDev has submitted us for many more directories.  For some reason, this tool hasn’t really put the fact together that the related blog is this one.  I hope at the next Google crawl date, we move out of the D range.  Being the overachiever that I am, getting close to a failing grade makes me, well uh, let’s say not happy.

entrepreMusings

Score: 95 out of 100 (an A – yay!)

Google PageRank: 5

Google Indexed Pages: 334

Last Google Crawl Date: February 28, 2008

Traffic Rank: Top 4.08%

Inbound Links: 5,699

And that’s despite not being listed in Yahoo! or the other directories.  I haven’t done any formal SEO on my blog (i.e., the report even tells me I don’t have page titles and descriptions) but I know the high rank is probably primarily due to the fact that I frequently update the blog making it fun and interesting for those Google spiders and my readers to reference.

So my conclusion is that even if you have hired an SEO firm, take time to check out other SEO tools out there like Website Grader.  You might just find something to ask your firm about and learn something about the process along the way.  Even the best of teams and people sometimes require a little oversight.  If they are a good team, they won’t get defensive and they’ll work to fix it right away and make it up to you with hopefully more than yummy looking billiard cupcakes!

Stay tuned for more of my SEO journey that may involve cupcakes (or more likely other random pictures) by subscribing to my blog here!  If you have an SEO experience you’d like to share, please don’t hesitate to leave a delicious comment below.

Author: | Filed under: entrepreneurship | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments »

13 Comments on “What They Don’t Tell You About SEO – Part 2”

  1. 1 Mike Volpe said at 9:40 PM on March 3rd, 2008:

    Thanks for taking the time to write about Website Grader. We’re glad you found the tool helpful and valuable.

    Sorry we didn’t find your blog. Website Grader is pretty sharp, but not perfect. I’ll let the awesome techies know and we’ll see what we can do.

  2. 2 How to (Really) Use SEO Effectively « FoundRead said at 2:02 AM on March 4th, 2008:

    […] now a regular visitor to her own blog, entrepreMusings.com. Tonight I ran across her current post, What They Don’t Tell You About SEO – Part 2. As you’d expect, it details Aruni’s adventures in hiring a “search engine […]

  3. 3 Carole said at 8:37 AM on March 4th, 2008:

    Speaking of keyword optimization: just want to make sure you have “log sheet” in there somewhere!

    I originally found you because I was looking for a log sheet to track diapers and feedings, and it occurred to me that someone might have come up with an online log sheet. Your site never popped up in Google, but The Lactivist had mentioned your site in her blog, and I found you that way. Thank goodness!

    : )

  4. 4 mike said at 11:52 AM on March 4th, 2008:

    you should step up to seomoz.org

    their premium membership tools and advice are by far the most extensive available.

    they’ve got some freebie stuff too, but the pro level tools are like website grader x 10.

  5. 5 Aruni said at 9:23 PM on March 4th, 2008:

    @Mike thanks for the great Website Grader tool. It has been really informative.

    @Carole we do have breastfeeding log in there somewhere. Hopefully with SEO we will now pop up in google when people search for log sheet to track baby stuff. 🙂

    @mike seomoz.org sounds like a great site. Since I’m a boostrapping entrepreneur I have to rely on the free stuff for a while. 🙂

  6. 6 Charles said at 10:34 PM on March 4th, 2008:

    I found out about this post and this blog on Found|Read. Thanks for sharing that tool. I just tried Website Grader for some of my sites, and let’s just say it’s an eye opener (and in some cases, a cold shower)!

  7. 7 Aruni said at 9:03 PM on March 5th, 2008:

    Hi Charles – thanks for stopping by. It is a real eye opener isn’t it? Most of us have no clue how the search engines see our site.

  8. 8 Jonathan Boutelle said at 4:49 PM on March 6th, 2008:

    Big shout-out to website grader. Their product is free and awesome … definitely try it out before you hire anyone to do something. At the least it will inform your conversation with an SEO specialist, at the most it will remove the need for it! ;->

  9. 9 Aruni said at 12:26 PM on March 8th, 2008:

    Hi Jonathan – It is a great tool and as an entrepreneur I am all for free stuff!

  10. 10 What They Don’t Tell You About SEO - Part 3 | entrepreMusings said at 3:55 PM on May 19th, 2008:

    […] SEO campaign managed by SpryDev and before you read the rest, I suggest you check out my Part 1 and Part 2 […]

  11. 11 Search Engine Optimization - SEO at Metjuz said at 8:17 AM on July 16th, 2008:

    I already knew about Website Grader and it is useful for checking if you made some mistakes in your “on site” SEO. But even more powerful is “off site” SEO which is basically link building. You can find a lot of relevant free link just typing for example:
    your_keyword and (“Add link” or “Add site” or “Add URL” or “Add Website” or “Submit link” or “Submit site” or “Submit URL”)
    in any search engine. You will be displayed with lot of sites where you could possible submit your site to and all this for free.

  12. 12 A Dream You Have Will Come True | entrepreMusings said at 8:01 AM on July 30th, 2008:

    […] in the meantime you can go back and read my What They Don’t Tell You About SEO posts Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 to get you primed and ready for Part […]

  13. 13 What They Don’t Tell You About SEO – Part 4 | entrepreMusings said at 6:43 PM on October 22nd, 2008:

    […] on my SEO experiences, check out my posts: What They Don’t Tell You About SEO Part 1, Part 2, and Part […]