My keyword / search phrase is “Fort Wayne Website Design”.  And my current results are:

Google: #7
MSN: #1
Yahoo: #1

 So, that seems like a pretty good results.  I’ll be watching my blog stats (I’m using both Google analytics and WP-Stats) to see if this means any more traffic.

Questions and issues that remain to be solved:

1.  Why don’t I appear in the top 10 LOCAL results in Google?
2.  Why do I appear #1 in Yahoo and MSN, but only #7 in Google – I need Google to be Top 5
3.  Is this a good search term?  Should I optimize for something better?  Should I “ADD” another option – i.e. try to stay #1 on the current term (“Fort Wayne Website Design”), but add another term?

So, I’ll be watching, reading data, and asking questions over the next month to see what the answers are.  Keep reading, I’ll have answers in the future.

I have had some success: currently I am listed as numbers 2 and 3 on Yahoo, number 4 on MSN (hey I moved up 1 place) and number 17 on Google (that means page 2).  Not really sure why I’m so much farther down on Google than on the other sites.  But, I’m still working on it.

Lately I’ve been trying to pay even more attention to the whole <title> tag deal.  I’m using (along with 80 billion or so other folks), the All-In-One SEO pack plugin to re-write all the titles and all the meta stuff.  I’ve had to tweak and play with it a bit, but I think (emphasis on think), I have struck a good balance between human readable – friendly title and ones that include all my keywords.  

What are my keywords?  Still the same: Fort Wayne Website Design.

I’d like to appear #1 for that term on Yahoo, MSN, and Google.  Then I would feel like I have made some progress…

What is interesting is to look at how my site has started to shift lately.

If you look at the month of September, here is some of the searches I appeared in the Top 20:

Notice that terms like “Fort Wayne Analytics”, “Free Survey” and others were making the top list.

Now look at the first two weeks in October: 

Now, I see terms like “eh design” and other variants like that starting to move there way up into the list.  I suppose that is a good thing.  I’m not sure.

It still doesn’t have Fort Wayne Website Design in the list.  But, this could also be a result of just a poorly chosen term.  Nobody is searching for that, perhaps.

More later.  For now, back to work.

I’m working on the video right now.  But, here’s a short sample with a bunch of great, great thoughts.  Enjoy!

First of all, let’s start off with my goals:

Goal #1: Optimize site speed.  I wanted the site to be faster, more stable, more responsive, etc.

Goal #2: SEO.  I want my site to show up on the first page of all the major search engines (Google, MSN, Yahoo) when searching for “website design fort wayne”.

So, with those two goals in mind, here’s a brief list of what I did, along with links:

1.  Database backup plug-in (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/) – this plug in does just what its names says – it backs up your database.  Great for any issues that show up.  Really nice feature is that you can schedule it to run at select times.  I set up an immediate back up and then a schedule every week.  It should e-mail me the back up every week – this should be a great confirmation.

2.  WP-Super-Cache (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/) – this plug-in is often thought of to be the single most important thing you can do to increase your wordpress’ speed.  It creates caches of your pages and posts and serves up these whenever it can.  Very easy to install (not much technical knowledge needed).

3. Delete Plug-ins – obviously, deactivating old plug-ins that aren’t being used is a good idea.  But, I went ahead and made sure I deleted them from the plugin directory as well – just to be sure.

4.  Optimize template head – there is a LOT that can be done to optimize the template.  I just did a little bit – trying to reduce database queries.  I went through the head and tried to find references to bloginfo() and replace it with static text.  A lot of the info is never going to change (like character set and other things like that).  So, I took out the database calls and put in the text.  Won’t really “speed up” the page load much, but will reduce the server load.

5.  Optimized the Database – this I did manually.  There are some plug-ins to help (you’ll have to search).  But, I went into phpMyAdmin and optimized all the tables and then deleted any tables that were created by plug-ins I wasn’t using anymore.

6.  Optimize CSS and javascript libraries (CSS - http://iceyboard.no-ip.org/projects/css_compressor, JS - http://www.xtreeme.com/javascript-optimizer/) – these tools simply remove the white space and comments from files that are completed.  Be sure to keep non-compressed files as the compressed ones are virtually impossible to edit or debug.

NOW, for some other SEO thoughts:

1.  Text – I tried re-writing most of my text to make sure it includes my keywords.  BUT, I am not willing to sacrifice quality or readability for sake of keyword stuffing…

2.  Google XML Sitemap – (plugin - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/) – this great plugin will create a normal and compressed version of a google compliant site map (XML).  It will also submit the sitemap to google and to other.

3.  Include and update all meta tags – I know, it’s not a big deal to search engines any more, but, I wanted to make sure every page, every post has valid and helpful meta tags on them.

4.  rename images – I went through my images and re-named them to include my keywords

5. Page title – the <title> tag is often cited to be one of the most important to google.  So I re-worked it as well.  It now includes all my key words.

6.  H1 tags – I tried to put <H1> tags at the top of every page and include my keywords inside these <h1> tags.  Not on every page – due to readability.

7.  LINKS – ok, I know this is a HUGE deal, but I don’t have that many incoming links.  I’ve tried to go and put links on sites I have developed, when appropriate, but that’s not a ton.  We’ll just have to see.  I do have good links from my linkedin page (http://www.linkedin.com/ehdesign), my facebook page (http://www.new.facebook.com/profile.php?id=590430234&ref=profile ).  But, it’s still not a ton

8.  Content – I’m trying to put good up to date content on a regular basis.  More people will read, more people will link, google will crawl more often – it’s a win for everyone.

9.  ALT tags – Again, it’s not a huge deal, but I tried to go through all my images and make sure my ALT tags did two things – described images (as they should for visually impaired), and also make sure that those ALT tags include my keywords.

So, that’s what I’ve been doing.  Right now, the results?

1.  Wordpress is much faster

2.  What about SEO?  Right now – number 5 on MSN, number 2 on Yahoo, number 17 on google (that’s page 2 – weird, huh?)

Still to do:

1.  Work on business ranking placement….

They’ve talked about how they did it and how they did it different than most other companies.

Here’s a link to the article:

http://www.krisjordan.com/2008/09/17/jason-fried-10-things-weve-learned-at-37signals/

I am also thrilled about being able to work with The TQM Network (website) to do a video interview with Avinash.  As you might know, The TQM Network is in the business of helping companies and individuals share best practices, ideas, insights, and more in order to grow together.

Together, we are doing a video interview with Avinash and would love to have input from all of you about what we should ask him.  Simply click on the contact us tab and give me your thoughts.

I am checking www.wordpress.mobi to see about adding the mobile plugin to my own site to create a mobile version. I will keep you all posted.