The topic of Search Engine Optimization (SEO for short) is one of huge interest.  In short, it is the process of getting a web site to rank higher in search engine results.  Particularly, it is focused on getting a particular site to appear high in google.

Here at EH Design & Consulting, we’ve been working with many companies on the process of SEO.  And, I thought it would be interesting to give a case study of sorts – AN IN PROGRESS story.

Just recently, we started working with the Family Care Center.  The Family Care Center is a Christian Counseling organization located on the North East side of Fort Wayne.  The Executive Director of the center, Denny Howard, contacted us at EH Design & Consulting, hoping to get his web site to appear higher in google search results.

So, we began the process of working with him.  Here are some of the steps we followed and some of the preliminary results:

STEP 1: Identify Keywords

Often times, this can be the most difficult part of the journey – deciding on exactly what you expect and want people to type in to find you.

For Family Care Center, we came up with the following terms:

• Christian Counseling Fort Wayne
• Marriage Counseling Fort Wayne
• Christian Counselor Fort Wayne
• Marriage Counselor Fort Wayne

Originally, the client had include the word “OF’ and “IN” – i.e Christian Counseling IN fort Wayne / Christian Counseling OF Fort Wayne.

But, we realized the these words are commonly called STOP WORDS – meaning that Google almost always ignores these words (there are a few exceptions).

After deciding on these terms, we did a little more research and learned the the terms “Christian Counseling Fort Wayne” and “Marriage Counseling Fort Wayne” we much more commonly used terms on Google.  Together, there are over 300 searches a month for these two terms.  While not a huge audience on a national scale, to be able to capture even a majority of these searches would be a huge win for Family Care Center.

STEP 2: Benchmark Current Rankings

After having identified some of the critical keywords for Family Care Center, our next step was to evaluate their current search engine rankings.  Typically, we try to create benchmarks on three major search engines:

• Google – with approximately 85% of the search engine market
• Bing – with approximately 4% of the search engine market
• Yahoo – with approximately 7% of the search engine market

We created some benchmarks for Family Care Center.  In this particular it wasn’t difficult.  Family Care Center did not appear in the top 10 pages on any of the three search engines.

So, our benchmarks were that Family Care Center’s site was non-existant on the search engines.  Nowhere to go but up, right?

STEP 3: On Page Changes

Now that e have keywords addressed and have benchmarked our current standings, it is time to make some changes.   The first step in this case was to begin with “on page” changes.

This involves updating things such at the TITLE tag (what appears in the blue bar for Internet Explorer), META tags, H1 tags, etc.

These are changes you can see.  Changes to content.

So, for Family Care Center – we updated all the title to be keyword rich titles – unique titles that included all their keywords.

In addition, we went through each page and added keyword rich H1 tags, Meta tags (stuff you don’t see and not terribly important – but still worth the time).

Also, we went through images and checked things such as ALT tags and TITLE tags to make sure they were keyword rich as well.

STEP 4: Create Links

After making updates to on page items, the next phase of Search Engine Optimization involves creating links to the Family Care’s web site.  Google sees every incoming link as a “vote” from that website that Family Care’s site is “important”.  The important you are, the higher you appear.

For Family Care Center, we submitted them to numerous directories, created links on our own site, added links on facebook, google local, and other places.  This phase is often (and in this case is) an ongoing phase.  New links are created on a regular basis.

STEP 5: Wait 20-30 Days and Evaluate

Once on page factors are updated and links have been created, it’s now time to wait for Google (and others) to re-index and then evaluate.

In Family Care’s case, we waited about 20 days and then did a new evaluation (just a week ago).

The new results were MUCH more impressive:

• Google – bottom of page 1 (Number 10)
• Bing – top of page 1 (Number 3)
• Yahoo – top of page 1 (Number 1)

Not a bad result

STEP 6: Repeat

The sixth and final step is to repeat.  We do further on page updates (tweak our titles, update images, rename directories to be more SEO friendly), create more incoming links, etc.

After all this SEO, the real question becomes – can we measure the payoff?  DO we have new leads, new contacts, new appointments, etc.?

Interested, want to know more?  CONTACT US at EH Design & Consulting to learn more.

I’m sure we’ve all heard all the incredible statistics about facebook:

• More than 400 million active users
• 50% of these users visit the web site every day
• More than 35 million users update their status every day
• If Facebook was a country, it would be the world’s 4th largest

Amazing statistics, sure.  But, the question is how do our businesses, our causes, capture this traffic?  How do we take advantage of this incredible opportunity?

Well, there are a lot of answers.  But, one that might be the most powerful is creating a facebook fan page.

Recently, I set up a facebook fan page for my church and wanted to use it as an example of the power of a facebook fan page.

What is a fan page?

When it comes to networking with other members, facebook allows to basic tools – a group, and a fan page.  A fan page, unlike typical facebook pages, is viewable by anyone (including Google).  So, anyone who visits facebook can see this page.  People don’t become “friends” with a fan page.  Instead they become a “fan”.  Once they become a fan, they will now receive updates in their news feed – in much the same way that they receive updates from their friends.

But, this ability to be seen by anyone (including search engine robots) is a big deal.  It means that links from a facebook fan page back to a web site can often help with Search Engine rankings (although links typically have the “nofollow” parameter).

Also, facebook fan pages do not have the limit of 5,000 friends that normal account have.  Fan pages can have an unlimited number of fans.

Finally, fan pages can have “pretty” urls – while facebook groups can not.  For example, for the fan page I set up for my church, I was able to make the URL: http://www.facebook.com/blackhawkmin (for Blackhawk Ministries).  This makes it much easier to remember the URL.

How Blackhawk uses its fan page
(and how you can)

Within two weeks of setting up its fan page, Blackhawk had almost 420 fans (it has continued to grow).

This means that, with just a little bit of time invested, they now have 420 people who regularly (daily?) see there “brand”, their events, their updates, etc.  It is an incredibly simple way to get a lot of people looking at your cause or business without any investment of money.

In addition,  as a result of the facebook fan page, facebook has become the second leading referrer to blackhawk’s regular web site.  That means that these 420 people are clicking on links in the updates and visiting the Blackhawk web site.  Here’s a simple graph from Google Analytics showing how much the traffic coming from facebook has grown:

So, not only are the hundreds of people seeing updates on their own facebook news feeds, they are also clicking on links and visiting the main Blackhawk page.  And, best of all, all of this is free.

That means Blackhawk has over 400 people (now almost 450) who regularly, daily, interact with their brand and visit their web-site.  What a great tool!

Here’s a few ways Blackhawk has continued to use its facebook fan page…

Advertise Upcoming Events

Blackhawk posts upcoming events and specials on the facebook fan page EVENTS page.  People can then ask questions, RSVP, view others who have RSVP’ed, etc.  All the event have links back to the Blackhawk Ministries web page with more information about the event.

Add Photos and Videos

By posting videos and photos, Blackhawk is able to tag people – thereby encouraging them to visit the page and possibly to visit the blackhawk site.  Photos and videos also provide another reason for fans to return to the page.  And, as a result, see other items – including events, posts, etc.

Add links back to Blackhawk’s site

This is where things get really powerful.  Every time something of note is added to the website, Blackhawk adds a new update to its facebook fan page.  This means that Blackhawk has a built in way to let almost 450 people know about web site updates.  And, many of these people click on the links and visit the site!

Imagine as a business being able to have an easy way to let people know about a new blog post, a new product addition to the store, a new event scheduled, etc.  By using your facebook fan page as a method to let people know about web changes, you have a simple, effective, and free method to let people who are truly fans know about what is new on your site.

This is really just the beginning of many powerful ways to use a facebook fan page.  There literally are many, many more great ways to take advantage of this incredible opportunity.

Got questions, want to explore how a facebook fan page could benefit your business, just want to talk more about social media and your company????  CONTACT US today

It’s time for me — and you — to take a lesson from the big brands, a lesson that’s true for anyone who’s interested in what it takes to stand out and prosper in the new world of work.

Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.

It’s that simple — and that hard. And that inescapable.

– The Brand Called You, Fast Company

So, understanding that both personal and corporate branding are critical tasks for all of us, how do we go about creating and maintaining a brand?

In this post, I want to suggest just one simple step, a first step we can all do to start taking control of our personal or corporate brands.

That task is simply to take control of your name.  Whether it is your own personal name or your corporate name – maintaining control over your name is critical.  I want to suggest two simple task you can do to help control your own name:

1.  Register your domain name – with every popular ending

Suppose your name is John Smith.  I would suggest immediately going to a domain name registrar (I use 000domains.com) and registering your name with as many possible endings as you can.  So, for our example, I would immediately purchase johnsmith.com, johnsmith,net, johnsmith.org, johnsmith.tv, johnsmith.me, johnsmith.mobi, johnsmith.biz.

While the domain names aren’t free (they run between $15 and $30 per year), it’s a lot cheaper to buy them ALL now than to try and buy them later from a reseller, or, worse yet, to try and repair the damage when someone buys the same name as you with a different ending and puts up an offensive web-site.

So, take the time and buy ALL your names now – by the way – I own designedbyeh.com, designedbyeh.net, designedbyeh.org, designedbyeh.biz, designedbyeh.tv, and designedbyeh.mobi.  Right now, all these domains simply re-direct to the same web-site: www.designedbyeh.com.

2.  Register your name on EVERY social networking site you can

Whether you use them or not, you should register your name on as many social networking sites as you can.  Now, before you start to freak out and think – “I don’t use these social sites – I don’t even know what they are.”  That’s not the point… YET.  The point here is to simply secure your name in as many places as you possibly can.  And, it’s not as hard as you might think.

I suggest two services to help you with this:

1. NameChk – www.namechk.comThis site is simple to use.  Simply enter your desired name (username) into the text box at the top of the page and click on the “CHK” button.  The site will automatically check if this name is available on 145 social sites and let you know the results.

   For example, here’s a screenshot of the results when I did a Name Check for “ehdesign”:

   
   The red sites are sites where I have already registered “ehdesign”, while the green sites are sites where it is still available.  As you can see from the screenshot, I have already registered the name on many of the sites.  A few are typically reported incorrect (about 6 were on this example).  But, a service like this provides a GREAT starting place.  Just reserving your name, so that no one else does, is a GREAT way to be ready for personal or corporate branding.

2. KnowEm – www.knowem.com

   KnowEm can be a lot more advanced – it will look through more sites – grouped by cateogries such as entertainment, business, blogging, etc. – AND even register your name for you (although you have to pay for this service – usually around $100).

So, are you in control of your own personal or corporate brand?  If not, maybe these two step are two easy steps to get you started.  While there’s a LOT more you could do with your own personal brand – including adding real content to all the site you registered in step 2 above – these two steps are a great starting point.

Ready to go deeper?  Want to know more?  Want to find out other ways EH Design & Consulting can help you? Contact us today for more inforamtion!

Keeping track of your brand can be a difficult task.  With all these on-line, social conversations happening it can be difficult to really know what is being said about you, your company, your products, etc.  But knowing what is being said about you, your business, your key markets is CRITICAL. As I’ve said before, if you don’t know about these conversations, you can’t join in the conversations.  And, I guarantee, conversations are happening.  The only question is – are you going to participate.

So, if we agree that there are conversations happening online (blog posts, product reviews, twitter posts, facebook comments, youTube videos, etc.), the question is “how do I find out about these conversations and join in”?

Well, that a great question and there are a lot of good answers.  In a previous post (Two Simple Business Uses For Twitter) I described one method – using the Advanced Twitter Search based on location.  This is a great way to find people who are twittering about you or a topic of interest within a certain distance from you (i.e.  anyone talking about “antiques” within a 50 mile radius).  But, what if you want to join in on conversations happening on other mediums?  What if you want to know about blog posts, web site updates, facebook posts, etc.?

The answer now is Google Alerts!  Google Alerts are a great way to get regular updates any time Google finds a web page with your search term.  Using Google Alerts, you could get an e-mail every time Google finds a new web page that mentions the search term you chosen.  You can choose to get e-mails immediately, and daily or weekly digests (summaries).  You can also choose to have the results delivered to an RSS feed – my personal favorite.  Assuming you choose instant e-mail notifications, you would receive an e-mail every time Google finds a new article, blog, video, image, etc. that contains your search term.  What an awesome way to join in the conversation and help to control your brand.

Here’s the basics of how Google Alerts work:

1. Visit www.google.com/alerts and create your Google alert.  The main screen (once you are logged in – you will have to have a Google account) looks like this:
   Simply type in your search terms, select a type (for instance – if you only want to get results from blogs, etc.), select How often, and select where to deliver the information to (you can choose RSS later)
2. After you click “CREATE ALERT” you’ll be in the manage screen.  It looks like this:
   You can see from this screen shot that I had two Google Alerts set up – both being delivered to an RSS Feed, updated immediately (as-it-happens).  So, any time the words EH Design (my company) or Eric Hall (my name) appears in a new page in Google, the RSS Feed will get updated.  I’ll know immediately whenever sometime is talking about these terms.  Since this time, I’ve added a couple more Google Alerts – basically centered on my around some of my key SEO terms – Fort Wayne Web Design, Fort Wayne E-Commerce, etc.

   Here’s what the RSS feed looks like in my browsers (I’m running Apple Safari – so Internet Explorer would look a little different):
   

3. My final step is to Monitor my RSS Feeds in a convenient RSS Feed Reader.  Since I use an Apple, I monitor my RSS Feeds in my E-Mail program (called, Mail).  So, just as I would go to Mail to view any no e-mail message, so I go to mail to check if there is a new e-mail message, I also see if there are any new Google Alerts.  Here’s what it looks like in my Mail program:

Google Alerts – a great way to keep up to date with your own brand, product, search terms.

Want to know more? Have other ideas about? Leave a comment and share your thought. Or, contact EH Design & Consulting today, and we can talk about all the ways Social Media can help your business!

When people find out I’m “into” twitter, some common questions come up:

• Why would anyone care what I had for breakfast? – Assuming that the only thing posted on twitter is useless information
• Is there any real value in twitter?

For me and for my business, the answer is a resounding YES to the second question.  I believe that there is indeed real value in twitter.

Today, I wanted to share just two very simple uses for twitter that I think you and your business use.

1.  Use Twitter To Drive Traffic To Your Site

Here is a graph of some of the recent traffic to my blog (as recorded by the FREE stats program: Google Analytics):

Notice the ups and downs on the graph?  Of course, they are impossible to miss.  The obvious question, when looking at this graph is “What caused the spikes”?

The answer: TWITTER!

Each of the spikes in traffic represent a day (or some times a couple of days) where I sent out just one tweet about a new blog post I had.  As a result of the single tweet (and a few kind re-tweet), my traffic for that day made a significant increase.

That’s a GREAT use for twitter!

Of course, any business or person has to be careful about always being self-serving.  If all you ever do on twitter is send out tweets hoping to lure people back to your own web site, then people will stop listening (following you).  But, if you tweet other useful information AND you tweet links to your own site, then people will visit.  If the content is interesting – they will come back!

I would suggest that this use makes it absolutely essential that your business has a blog.  Your business blog needs to be updated regularly (I’m shooting for once a week on my own – a new goal).  And, your business blog needs to have interesting content.  If you have a blog, and if you post regularly, and if you post about interesting content… then sending out regular tweets that link back to your blog WILL increase your traffic (and have some good effect on your Search Engine placement as well).

This alone should make twitter worth looking into.

2.  Use Twitter to Find People Talking About Your Business In Your Area

Wether or not you are on twitter, others are.  And, they are talking about all kinds of things.  Chances are they are talking about your business.  Wouldn’t  it be nice if there was a simple way to know every time someone within a 50 mile radius (or whatever area you work in) was asking questions about your business?  You could jump in, offer answers, offer resources, even offer a sale! Wouldn’t that be a great tool?

Of course, the tool absolutely does exist and it is called… twitter.  It’s a simple little feature built into twitter called TWITTER SEARCH.  Visit search.twitter.com and click on the “ADVANCED SEARCH” link on the right side of the search box.

In the Advanced Search area you can do some amazing things!  The thing we are focused on right now is search by PLACES.

Let’s make up a company.  Suppose you own ANTIQUES R US, located in Atlanta, GA.  And, you would like more people to know about your business.  So, what do you do?  Well, one great option is to use the Advanced Twitter Search to look for anyone talking about Antiques within 50 miles of Atlanta, GA.  Here’s what the Advanced Search might look like:

You can see here that ANTIQUES R US is update to search twitter for the word “Antiques” within a 50 mile radius of Atlanta, GA.  What would ANTIQUES R US find?  A lot.  Below are just two tweets form the last couple of days that may have been interesting to ANTIQUES R US:

Here is some who had the day to herself and visited one of ANTIQUES R US competitors – the Lakewood Antiques Market.  What if ANTIQUES R US had responded to her and said something like: “Glad you loved Lakewood.  If you liked them, you might enjoy us as well – mention this tweet for 10% off”.  Who knows, maybe the person would have showed up

Here’s another:

This person is looking for an Antiques place to visit in the Savannah area.  What is ANTIQUES R US had responded with a couple of excellent restaurants (close to the store, of course) and a personal invitation to visit the store?

Again, the conversation is already happening.  I promise – people are really talking about your business.  The question is whether or not you are going to join the conversation!

Advanced Twitter Search – by location – my second favorite use for  twitter.

Want to know more?  Have your own favorite uses for twitter?  Leave a comment and share your thought.  Or, contact EH Design & Consulting today, and we can talk about all the ways  Social Media can help your business!

Not familiar with the campaign?  It is Google’s ad campaign to push harder into the business world with its enterprise offerings.  Here’s a short YouTube video Google put out:

If you haven’t been watching Google for a while, then you might have missed what they’ve been doing lately.  While still owning the majority of search volume online (around 60-65%), Google has begun pushing into other areas as well.  A few of the key areas that I think any business should consider:

• GMAIL – Google has made some incredible changes to G-mail that can be a HUGE time and cost saver to many businesses.  Now any domain (yourWebDomain.com) can run it’s own e-mal through Gmail.  What does this mean?  It means that you can take advantage of Google’s Anti-Spam features (powered by Postini) – which are some of the absolute best in the business.  You can also read your e-mail online through the G-Mail interface.  You can have an assistant send e-mail on the boss’s behalf ( e-mail delegation), and e-mail archiving.   You get ALL of this without giving up your own domain name.  This means that you continue to have you e-mail as Joe@YourDomain.com, but the e-mail is routed through the GMail Service.  The person sending you an e-mail AND the person receiving an e-mail from you all see the Joe@YourDomain.com as the e-mail, but you get all the storage, spam filtering, e-mail archiving / backup, web interface, etc. of Gmail!

  Cost: $5 per user per year
  Savings:  This could be a huge savings.  Companies can stop paying thousands of dollars for expensive spam filters / appliances.  Also (as you will see below), this cost could be even bigger in that you could COMPLETELY DITCH an Exchange server!  This could save thousands more every year!

• Google Calendar – Google calendar is a powerful, shareable calendaring system.  And, the best feature is that it can integrate seamlessly with MS Outlook and Apple iCal!   In addition to this, it completely supports multiple users – meaning you can see when other in your organization are busy and schedule meetings with them.  You can also share your calendar, allowing others to simply view it, edit it, etc.  Again, this gives everyone all the functions of a typical MS Exchange server at a cost that will save thousands every single year.

  Cost: $5 per user per year (this is the same $5 user per year as the above, not in addition)
  Savings: Again this could be huge.  Getting rid of an Exchange server will save any organization thousands of dollars a year.

• Google Docs –  Google has been putting out three very powerful web based programs – Word Processor, Spreadsheet, and PowerPoint programs.  These programs aren’t as advanced as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.  But, most users don’t use the advanced features in these programs.  And, again, the cost savings is HUGE!  All three programs also allow for complete sharing of docs.  This means you NEVER again have to e-mail a doc to a co-worker.  You simply share it with him or her and you both edit it together.  You can see changes made by Co-Worker X and roll back, etc.  It makes collaboration a snap!

  Cost: FREE (although when used with the $5 per user per year, it is a bit simpler to collaborate)
  Savings: Well, let’s see with the average cost of MS Office from Amazon running around $325, the cost savings is $325 multiplied by the number of workers who choose to use Google Docs.  Again, The answer here is THOUSANDS more, potentially!

• Google Analytics – Do you have a website?  Do you know how many visits you get?  How long people stay on your site?  Which pages are visited the most?  All of this data is available for FREE from Google.  Simply add a few lines of code to the bottom of your website and you can get all the data about your site you could want and MUCH more!

  Cost: FREE
  Savings: None, unless you are paying for an analytics page now or using some stupid looking hit counter (then you don’t save money, you just save the hassle of having a stupid hit counter on your home page)

These are just four of my favorite Google products right now. There’s a ton more that we could talk about.  Things like: Google Voice, Google Wave, Google Checkout, Google Wave, etc.  All of these are available for free and could save companies a ton of money and a lot of time.

Interested?  Got Questions?  Leave me a comment or contact us.  We’d love to talk more with you about how we can help save you money!

If you search for the term “Fort Wayne Web Deisgn” I appear in the top 5 on Google, and I appear number 1 on yahoo and bing!

So, I thought I would take the time and just share a few simple steps (my top ten list) that I’ve been trying to utilize for SEO:

1. Setup Canonicalization and enforce WWW on all pages – this can sound really confusing, but basically it means making sure that regardless of whether I type in WWW.YOURSITE.COM or just YOURSITE.COM – my browser will ALWAYS end up saying the same thing – i.e. the WWW. is always added.The reason for this is simple – you don’t want Google to see two different options for your site – one with WWW and one without WWW.  You want all the Google Juice going to the same site – no matter how people link to it.
2. Submit to the three major search engines:Google: http://www.google.com/addurl/
   Bing: http://www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx
   Yahoo (becoming BING): http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
3. Submit to DMOZ – the Open Directory ProjectThe DMOZ (www.dmoz.org ) is an open-source / volunteer directory.  It has real humans who are compiling a list of web site into categories.  Visit the site – look at the categories and start to DRILL DOWN by clicking on categories until you find one you think your site should fit into.  Then, look for the SUBMIT URL link on the top of the page.  Click it and fill in the information.The approval process can often take months (or longer).
4. Update TITLES on all pages – pretty much everyone agrees that the <title>YOUR TITLE HERE</title> tag is the most important on-page factor for determining Google ranking.  Your Title should be around 65-75 characters long and include your keywords.  Titles should also vary from page to page – to accurately reflect the content of the page – and to also continue to reflect your keywords.
5. Update meta Keywords and meta descriptions.  Now, Google freely admits that meta keyword tag has absolutely no effect on Google ranking.  However, I still think it is important to get the meta keyword tag correct.  Of course, the same is said about meta description tag.  Generally this is used for the description that Google shows in a Search Result Page.
6. Create relevant H1 and H2 tags – your keywords should be at the top (first 1,500 characters) of the page inside of H1 tags.  Google looks at anything inside of H1 tags as more important – after all (goes there reasoning) anything we make a header must be more important, right?
7. Use ALT and TITLE tags on Images.  Make sure EVERY image has an appropriate ALT and TITLE tag added.  While Google can’t see what your image is – you can tell GOogle (via the ALT tag) and thereby win some valuable ranking.
8. Ensure that your HTML and CSS both validate:CSS Validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
   HTML Validator: http://validator.w3.org/.  If you site doesn’t validate, you’ll need a little bit of technical know how to fix problems.  And, some times it really isn’t a big deal, but it is always good to keep things “valid”
9. Create and Submit XML sitemaps to all major search engines.  Sitemaps are simple XML files that tell the search engines which pages exist and which pages should be crawled.  Creating and submitting a sitemap helps to ensure that Google, Bing, Yahoo, et al will actually find your pages.  The best way to learn about sitemaps: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitemaps
10. Create and use a Robots.txt file to help search engines index your content.  Using a robots.txt file is a bit more complicated than a sitemap.  And, typically a Robots.txt file is used to EXCLUDE areas of your site – like an admin site, etc.  But, you can do a TON with a good robots file – including blocking pages for a while and than unblocking them to gain google points.  Again, want to learn more, try Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots_exclusion_standard

So, there is my top ten list of Search Engine Optimization.  There’s a lot more to do.  And, all of these are what we like to call On Page Factors – meaning things you do to your own web page.  This didn’t even start to touch off page factors – like incoming links (another HUGELY popular topic).

Take a look at my list and let me know where I’m wrong or what I left off my list.  I’d love to hear about your top ten…

Well, I ‘ve had some decent success, but I’ve still been struggling – at least lately – with getting on the very top of Google.  It seems like the last 2 – 3 months, I have been hovering at the very last entry on page one or the very first on page two.

But just today something very strange happened.  My site jumped to 2 or 3 on the first page.  Not sure exactly what changed.  But, it’s a good thing.

Also, my listing on Google Business now appears in the top few (like top 4 or 5).

So, if the Google ranking holds, I’ve now got number 2 on Google and number 3 on Bing – weird – I just went to check Bing and I’m now at number three.  I used to be number 1 on Bing.   Once again – what happened????

Anyway, I’m happy and I’ll keep looking at it.

As anyone reading this blog would know, I’ve been really interested in gaining Google ranking for the terms Fort Wayne Web Design and Fort Wayne Website Design.  So far, I’ve had a decent amount of success.  If you go to Yahoo or MSN  (both BING.COM, now), I rank 1,2 or 3 (it depends – on what? who knows?).  But, on Google, I only rank 11 – that means I am number 1 ON PAGE 2. I’ve been moving up and down quite a bit on Google.  I’ve been as high as number 5 and now as low as number 11.

I have a bunch of thoughts about why I’ve moved down lately.  Mostly, I think it has to do with some settings in my robots.txt file.  I was trying to avoid the infamous duplicate content penalty – a tricky problem with WordPress.  But, I think it did more harm than good.

So, the question is, what does all of this have to do with Caffeine?  Well, recently Google has been publicly talking about a major update to their website ranking algorithm.  They are calling “caffeine”.

Here’s a few bullet point about what Caffeine means to all of us who care about Search Engine Optimization:

• SPEED – rumor has it that the new update will speed up the search process a ton – but, I’m not sure who really cares.  I don’t know that we all complain that it takes too long to get the results.
• RELEVANCY – this is where it starts to get interesting.  Google is trying to create more relevant results.  But, the million dollar question is HOW?  What is changing to make more relevancy?
• WEIGHTING – it appears that some different things are being weighted higher.  It seems like Domain Authority and Domain Name exact matches are both being weighted higher.  Certain tags – like facebook and others, are being weighted higher, etc.

Want to know more?  Here’s a few resources to get you started:

• http://mashable.com/2009/08/14/google-caffeine-video/
• http://mashable.com/2009/08/10/google-new-version/
• BEST OF ALL – side by side comparison of OLD GOOGLE and NEW GOOGLE – http://www.comparecaffeine.com/

The first link from Mashable has a video interview with Matt Cutts.  Here it is embedded for your viewing pleasure:

I’ve been trying to optimize for the terms “FORT WAYNE WEB DESIGN” – just in case you are interested.

Well, I just started listening to a talk Matt Cutts given at the WordPress WordCamp event in San Francisco.

Matt Cutts is the head of Google’s webspam team.  So, his thought about SEO mean a TON.

Well, he gave a 45 minutes talk about SEO and WordPress.  Since I am totally into the topic, I thought you might be as well.

Here’s the talk: