January 24, 2008
What They Don’t Tell You About SEO - Part 1
 As some of you know we signed up with a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firm, SpryDev, back in mid-December. It’s been a great process and I already wish that we had our site designed with SEO in mind to being with. We are making several design, layout, menu, text, etc. changes that are very time consuming. I wish they could all be done overnight but given all of our time constraints unfortunately they can’t!
I think my biggest learning experience (note to self) so far is to have an SEO expert involved during the design of the site. It apparently will save a lot of time later. Now we won’t be sure if any of these changes will actually result in increased conversions for some time but so far they make sense to me. Apparently seeing results overnight doesn’t happen just like we can’t make all the changes overnight. Sigh.
The good news is in the past month we have seen a slight increase in the number of visitors. We’ve also seen more people finding us based on organic search (i.e., search terms in Google) versus a direct landing. Most people still find the Babble Soft site by searching on terms like Babble Soft, Baby Insights, Aruni (my name), etc. which is what I’m calling a direct landing. Since I’m not Britney Spears or some other famous person, it doesn’t really do us much good for people to be searching on my name! Now a noticeable few are finding us with relevant keywords.
Here are some of things we have done or are still working on:
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Changing our menu navigation and adding cool buttons. All in the name of increasing conversion. Brian Massey who blogs at Customer Chaos is their conversion specialist and he’s given us some great recommendations that will hopefully pay off big time. Interestingly, he just did a great post called Here’s the Truth About Building Your Website that is pretty accurate.
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Creating individual landing pages for our Family Stories and Press Releases. Check out our Sleep & Immunization Release that just went out!
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Setting up a phone number to display on our site (should have that up soon - I need to record a great greeting message)
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Adding Page Titles and Descriptions to each page. I can’t believe we hadn’t done that. DOH!! I guess that’s why they get the big bucks and further reason why we should have involved an SEO expert during the design phase of the site.
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Building links.
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Submitting articles, press releases, and other stuff to all the various sites that love them as much as we do.
Rose, our project manager at SpryDev seems to be very patient since I email her night and day asking her what else we can do and how fast we can do it. When it’s your personal credit card that gets hit each month you want to do everything possible to start seeing sales come in to offset those expenses.Â
Did I know that we would have to make some changes to our site going in? Yes, of course. Did I realize the extent of the changes, the time it would take to make them, and that cash wouldn’t start rolling in the door 10 seconds after we made each change? Not so much.
If you are interested in learning more about “What They Don’t Tell You About SEO,” go ahead and subscribe to this blog. If you know more about SEO than I do (chances are you do), then leave a comment and share your wonderful wisdom with the rest of us!
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January 24th, 2008 at 7:39 pm, Keith Burtis Says:
Unfortunatly, I am learning about SEO myself and I can’t really talk to the validity of the changes that you have made. That being said, it sounds like you will be building quite a bit more Google Juice for your site.
On the other hand I can speak to the time element. There is a reason that you did not go this route in the first place. That reason you may never know, but I do know however that the growing pains you are now experiencing are required training.
Just remember not to let the process blind you in a whirl of worry and speed, yet take everything in and slow things down in your mind. You will achieve all that needs done in the right time for the right reasons.
Thank you for your posts. I love the pictures. If Sandy Blanchard reads these blog posts, you are extraordinary.
January 24th, 2008 at 9:39 pm, Neena (NeenMachine) Says:
Aruni,
SEO is a full time job. There are so many tricks involved to try and hit page 1. I am still learning it myself. Good luck!
January 25th, 2008 at 3:45 pm, Aruni Says:
Hi Keith - thanks for the words of wisdom. You are right about things happening at the time they need to. I have let Sandy know you like her pictures.
Hi Neena - it sure does feel like a full time job! I’m optimistic that we’ll make progress.
January 25th, 2008 at 4:23 pm, Erica Ortiz Says:
I am doing a do-it-yourself process of SEO right now myself. I could kick myself for not learning about some of the tricks earlier, but you’re right its a process and a half!
I’ve tried http://www.websitegrader.com and wonder how accurate these free services are??
January 29th, 2008 at 5:17 pm, entrepreMusings » Press Release Distribution - What A Process! Says:
[...] why our SEO firm has also submitted it for distribution in free press release avenues on the Internet which should [...]
January 30th, 2008 at 7:12 am, Nilesh Mishra Says:
Truly agree with the problems yu would be experiencing for the changes you are doing on your site to make it SEO friendly..Mine is new and am still struggling..
January 30th, 2008 at 7:39 am, Aruni Says:
Hi Erica - thanks for the link. I don’t know how accurate they are, but they probably are an OK indicator of how things are going.
Hi Nilesh - Apparently SEO takes quite a bit of time but if it’s done right the effects can last for quite some time after. At least that’s what I’m hoping for!
March 3rd, 2008 at 10:03 pm, entrepreMusings » What They Don’t Tell You About SEO - Part 2 Says:
[...] Cupcakes - Photo by PinkCakeBox (flickr) As a follow on to my What They Don’t Tell You About SEO - Part 1 post, here goes Part [...]
March 5th, 2008 at 10:32 am, Nathan Schorr Says:
It great to read an account of how someone else is living their own SEO adventure. Maybe you touched on the subject but i have yet to find it… how did you chose your SEO company?
Good luck!
March 5th, 2008 at 9:07 pm, Aruni Says:
Hi Nathan - You can see the posts I did on how and why I selected SpryDev as our SEO firm here: http://www.entrepremusings.com/index.php/2007/12/04/search-engine-optimization-seo-yikes/ and here: http://www.entrepremusings.com/index.php/2007/12/11/seo-here-i-come/.