Trying something different here, so check this out.
My "regular" job is working for a company that does web development with CSS (cascading style sheets) and SEO work (search engine optimization) for their own websites and for their clients. We're working on one website in a particularly challenging and competitive SEO area -- real estate investor tools. There are lots of websites out there all fighting for high rankings with various keywords, and the client has select some they want to conquer.
So here's what I'm doing. I wrote up a case study of what we're up to with trying to improve the search engine rankings for the website MyTurboBidder.com with the keywords below. I've included the latest rankings, and will update things as the project progresses.
As of today (3/22/08):
Google search result for the keyword phrase
Real Estate Investor Tools
finds MyTurboBidder at position #284 of 33 million pages.
Google search result for the keyword phrase
Real Estate Investor Tool
finds MyTurboBidder at position #64 of 5.4 million pages.
Keywords: case study, CSS, internet, keyword, keywords, metatag, metatags, organic search, real estate, real estate bidding tools, real estate investor tools, search engine, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, search engine results, search engines, SEM, SEO, traffic, web design, web development, web page, web pages, website
Comments
BTW, I only mentioned Google because that's the biggest and toughest search engine to crack.
Yahoo, the #2 engine, has Real Estate Investor Tools at #16 of 49 million, while MSN has it #2 of 4.5 million.
Real Estate Investor Tool is even better. Yahoo has it at #14 of 56 million and MSN has #1 of 2.6 million.
Shortly after I posted this, Google went through another of their periodic algorithm/ranking reshufflings. As a result, our rankings dropped from #284 to #472 and from #64 to #135.
(This is something that happens from time to time, as a website owner you have to put up with it. The rankings change radically as pages are purged and added to the list, then things settle out again.)
I just checked back again, and the rankings are starting to improve. Real Estate Investor Tools is now coming in at #292 of 20 million pages, while Real Estate Investor Tool is at #86 of 24 million pages.
(Apparently, the mortgage crisis hasn't had too much of an impact on the number of websites related to real estate. Despite the economic news in mortgage credit and the housing market, it remains that people need to live somewhere and there is still money to be made in real estate investments.)
We'll shortly be reworking the content on the landing page, looking to improve its effectiveness with both visitors and bots. We'll see how that goes.
Update on Yahoo: Real Estate Investor Tools is now coming in at #3 of 50 million pages, while Real Estate Investor Tool is at #3 of 58 million pages.
Update on MSN: Real Estate Investor Tools is now coming in at #1 of 3.8 million pages, while Real Estate Investor Tool is at #1 of 2 million pages.
Both excellent results in such a short time!
It's also interesting to see the differences in both the rankings and number of search results for each of these major search engines. Yahoo, seemingly, casts a much broader net in terms of qualifying websites as pertaining to Real Estate Investor Tools, while MSN is much more discerning. The ranking differences, well... that's what makes each search engine different.
Once again the search engines show their differences, with Google trimming back their returned pages and MSN increasing and Yahoo staying even. Certainly results are improving with all three search engines, and more work is needed to keep the momentum going. After all, as I mentioned earlier, despite the housing market difficulties people still need a place to live. Besides, with the latest real estate "market correction" (finance-speak for a sudden plunge in prices) there are plenty of good deals out there for people looking to buy. Assuming, of course, that they can get a mortgage...
Anyway, here are this week's updates for Real Estate Investor Tools:
Updates for Real Estate Investor Tool: