That’s fine if you are a winder washer, living in down town New York, not so great if your are providing more of a niche service, like our new client who provides angel readings.

The net however, opens up a whole new market for this business…. assuming we can bring the people to it.  So as of 1 November, the SEOGuys are on the job, our goal to take out client to page 1 on Google.com for Angel Readings.

December 10 2009
And we are in the game, with Ask Upstairs coming in at a modest 145 on Google.com

December 20 2009.
Quick gains, already up to 85

December 25 2009
Onwards and upwards, we are at 43

January 3 2010
Still climbing, up to 38 today.

March 3 2010

Hits No.10 on Google.com and no11 on Google.com.au, even though no contract to get rankings on .com.au.

March 22 2010

Hits No.7 on Google.com, and 8 on Google.com.au.  Sadly, this is where our job ends as client has decided to not try for number one.  We are of course happy with achieving the contracted result…. but No.1 was not much more than No.7 and would have resulted in much better profits for the client.

April 3 2010

Site hits 4 on Google,com

The site is running a Zen Cart, as well as some custom programmed database driven pages, such as a baby names section. Problems we've found so far.

1. Zen cart, creates a whole heap of duplicate content pages. This causes problems for Google. Google does maintain it can work out which ones you want in the index….. but what if there are a whole heap of duplicate pages where the reality is you want none of them in the index? Anyway, this problem now fixed.
2. There were many pages, where the page title was duplicating on pages with different content. Pretty standard programming bug, fixed.
3. Site content is not great, client is working on this with us.
4. The site is not as popular as it could be. We are working on this.

So, it's the 7th of September 2009, and we are on the case.

Update 21 September 2009
It never ceases to amaze me how fast things can turn around. Already, the site is at No.10 for Baby Gifts. We've hit our target so fast, but we are not satisfied with 10, and will continue working for the next few weeks to see if we can give the top couple of sites a scare.

Update 30 September 2009
Site is now bouncing around at 6 to 8 on Google.com. We've hit our first targets, and are now eyeing off the top 3 positions. The site has a pretty poor links system, and we are thus installing a better one that will be more useful for their site visitors, be easier to manager and also be more Google friendly.

Update 13 March 2010

Site now seems solid at 7, lets see if it sticks.  Lots of problems were fixed, and new ones introduced when the site had magicseo added.  Fingers cross we are now at the end!

Well, having had a look at the site, and the competition, i think the SEO Guys are up to the challenge.

So, as of 5pm today, the 10th of June, we are on the case, and will report progress as we go.

Update 3 July 2009

Site is at No.3 for wholesale silver jewelry, but not without a great deal of work.  The site in fact dropped a place to 5 shortly after we took over.  Likely, this was a result of "lag" something already wrong with the site kicking in.  The fixes applied so far.

1. Optimise the site.
2. Fix all html/xhtml conflicts
3. Ban search engines from seeing duplicate versions of the site.
4. Start getting links from other sites. They are an ethical business, so its relevant for them to be listed in ethical business directories.
5. Start getting articles published on other sites, that refer to the site. The site owners have done some funky things which are worthy of publishing in jewelry magazines online.

Its a lot of work to go yet, but number 2, is looking very likely.

Update 19 July 2009

Site has reached its target of No.2 for "wholesale silver jewelry".  No pay for us yet, we need to maintain this position for at least 2 weeks, and the reality is we are going to continue working on the site for some months to come.

Update 29 July 2009

No.1 position achieved, and we are very pleased.  No.2 was our minimum requirement, but No.1 was always our goal.  We will be working hard over the next few months to solifidy this position, its no good if we don't keep it there.

Then, we did a historical check as to how the site had looked to Google 6 months before, and then we spotted the problems. The web developer had done some funky things, but thought better of them and removed them. Google had also spotted them, and we believe had added a "We believe you are trying to scam us" penalty.

Though the problems have been removed, Google penalties often have a time period before they expire. Sometimes, Google will remove them, if you fall on your sword and tell them you did wrong and ask for forgiveness. We decided this was likely the best course of action.

So our course of action is as follows:-
(1) Fix the small problems the site still as – done 03 August 2009
(2) Start working on increasing the popularity of the site – done 14 August 2009
(3) Apply to Google to get them to reconsider the penalty – done 16 August 2009.

Brisbane Removals

I am happy to say, the site has had the penalty lifted and had now shot to page 4. For "Brisbane Removalist. Not too spectacular, but evidence that the site penalty has now been lifted and that our efforts to gain higher rankings now for the site, will not be hampered by a penalty.

Update
18 December 2009
There are some things, that we just can not achieve.  We can't achieve top rankings, if what we recommend a client does, just does not get done.  The main issues with this site are lack of popularity, and duplicate content.  The webmaster for this site, has decided the best way to dominate Google, is to republish much of the website on another website…..and thus try and get TWO sites into the top ten.

Ba-bow. Google is far too clever to be tricked by that.  the other site has an obvious penalty, and the main site remains stuck on page four of Google.

I
 

When we take on a new client that has been online for a while, we have the vagaries of Google.com.au and penalties to possibly deal with.  Has the site done something wrong in the past that they are now penalized for?  Will this undermine our work?  Or delay it?

Google in the main, is a very reasonable company.  They penalize sites that deserve to be penalized, and they listen when told something done in the past has now been fixed, or was done by some unscrupulous SEO company that has now been fired.

In the case of the website or this new client, Shed Spot, we don't have obvious Google penalties to deal with, but we do have some work ahead of us to get it to the first page of Google.com.au for both Sheds, and Garden Sheds.  Google does not like to see very new sites rocket to the top of its rankings, if it were to allow this, the result would be an unstable index that people did not trust.  Trust is key.  Google will not allow a site to rank highly(at least for an extended period) until the site has proven itself trustworthy.

The shopping cart system being used by www.shedspot.com.au has been built by a company called “Interspire”.  We were quickly able to determine the shopping cart though whilst not a complete disaster, we full of duplicate content problems.  “This can not be” said our client.”It's recommended by Aaron Wall the SEO Expert”.'This is the second time in only a few months we've been given the “But Aaron Wall Says” comment and I am beginning to wonder what the hype is here.  We investigated the Interspire company a bit further and found out they were a client of Aaron Wall, they recommended Aaron Wall's services… their marketing seemed to associate them with him….but in fact their system seems not be in fact specifically recommended by Aaron, and it has got some fundamental problems.

At least in this case, the shopping cart software has been purchased instead of licensed by the client, and we can get access to it to reprogram it.

We have already started work redoing some of the code to fix the problems, and expect to have these done in 48 hours.

December 18 – Update
Wow.  What a nightmare this shopping cart turned out to be.  it really made me appreciate how much work goes into building a shopping cart that is no only feature packed, but has the SEO groundwork done.  Pretty much every mistake that could have been made when building this system, had been made.  A great many hours were spent fixing errors that really should not have been in a shopping cart application of this level of maturity,

But the fixes have been worthwhile. 

Site is now No.15 on Google.com.au for the main target phrase, "Garden Sheds" and at No.20 for the secondary phrase, "Sheds"  We expect a new update from Google in January, and for our client to get over the line then.

December 24 – Update

Site is now at No.7 for Garden Sheds on www.google.com.au, and  No.15 for "Sheds"  So top 10 achieved for one of our target phrases, one more to go. 

Wonderful to work with this client, the site owner is also the web developer, and he has done a great job og working with us, to make his site all it could be.  I have no doubt, that No.1 will be achieved in 2010.

February 10 2010

We are now working on top10 for over 1000 terms for this client.  Such a massive project can not be achieved over night – we are expecting to work on it for at least 12 months.  Some of the new targets include top10 rankings for Aviaries, garages and carports, as well as rankings for many combinations of these phrases with the client's delivery locations.  Here we go! 

March 13 2010

Top 10 for Sheds and Aviaries now achieved.

Desired target – page one on Google.com.au for Mosquito Nets

In this case, the problem was doing as Google says, but understood what Google is saying.  Google says first and foremost, make websites for people.  Don’t make websites for search engines.  Whilst this is true, it’s important to understand what Googles defines as being for people.

In the case of the Mostique website, at first glance…. it would appear that this was in fact being done.  The site was beautifully designed, easy to navigate, had a great product range and lots of great information about mosquito nets.  It was a website made for people.  So why was it on page 6, instead of page one?

The problem was, Google has its own definition of what making a website for people entails – what Google REALLY means is make your website for people, but make sure you do so in such a way that you don’t trip any Google filters.  The Google algorithm is very clever and in 99% of cases, it does find the best sites for a search result, is not fooled by tricks, and does not penalise good sites unfairly.  But no algorithm is infallible, and in the case of Mostique the Google algorithm was giving their site black marks for innocuous, minor issues, which really should have not been an issue.

Changing the site to ensure it still kept the look, feel and user experience as desired by the client, as well as ensuring it did no inadvertently trip Google filters was no easy task, and involved a fair bit of give and take.  It can be frustrating to have a search engine set the guidelines as to how a website must be put together in order to rank well.

But at the end of the Day, Google is king, so the website needed to be modified to achieve a good result for both site visitors and Google.

December 18 2009
We are proceeding slowly. Up to page 4, making the required changes to the system are proving to be difficult without compromising the site appearance.  Its also running on a server running on older, Microsoft Server 2003 operating system which is not helping things.  

December 26 2009
Up to 21 today, so onto page 3.

January 2 2010
Up to 11 to today, top of page 2, Tantalisingly close to the first page.

February 2010
No.5 achieved, a good result.

June 2010
Position 2 achieved.

July 2010
Site suffers a drop in rankings after a new design and system is installed. the new design is great, even better than the first, but Google took exception to some of the site elements and once again, the site was filtered down the list.
 Seoguys called back in to fix the issues.  Site on page6.

August 12 2010
Well, this is a first for us.  We have resigned from this job. 

Not because we can't get the site to NO.1, but because the client and their web developer have decided not to follow our advice. 

They have embarked on a plan of having only a tiny amount of content on their site, combined with a complex path of pages with canonical meta tags on them.  SEO suicide. 

But try as we may, they are refusing to add the content and remove the tags… even though the site was at number 2. before they made these changes, and has remained low ranked since the changes were made

Enormously disappointing for us as we've put in mountains of work on this project and the site should be at No.1 right now but the reality is if our instructions are not followed there is nothing we can do.

We are hopeful that by withdrawing from the project whilst still leaving all our external work in place, by refusing to accept any further payments even if our advice is now followed and rankings recover.. that the client will simply heed our advice and save their website's rankings.

Life Insurance

Mid June, 2009
The client contacted us from Canada, after his site which had been performing poorly for its main phrase(Life Insurance Canada) suddenly dropped totally out of Google.ca.  After discussing with him what had happened immediately prior to the drop, it was clear to us that Google had lost faith in his site/  A loss of trust from Google, is a major problem because before your site can hope to rise in rankings, this trust has to be won back.

We set about overhauling the site, to first win Google's trust back.  The first things we found.

1. The web developer had been using rel=nofollow on internal links to try and hoard page rank.  Google says please don't do this.  We fixed it.
2. The site was a big jumble of html and xhtml causing search engines to have problems crawling the site.  Fixed.
3. There were many duplicates of every page, caused by a problem in naming new pages.  Fixed.
4. There were numerous other html, navigation and content issues which we fixed.
5. We optimised the site, but did so REASONABLY.  Repeating the main phrase 15 times in 4 paragraphs is not reasonable.
6. The site had a blog, that had been spammed with rubbish.  Its no relevant to have comments turned on for this blog, so comments deleted and turned off.

Anyway 3 weeks after we started and BAAMM! Back into Google.ca above its previous rankings which had been lost 6 weeks before.  Up from not in the top 100 pages, to pages 2-5 for the main phrases.

Lots of work to do yet, but we are on the way

Update 29 July 2009.
Site now at No.4 on www.google.ca for life insurance Canada, and no 17 for "Life Insurance"  This is a massive result, to go from totally out of Google, not even in the top 1000, to page 1 for one of the main terms, and Page 2 with another.

We will continue to work on this site for some months to come, we are confidant that a top 2 position for these two search terms is achievable.

Update 30 August 2009
Sometimes things happen, that just make you shake your head.  Almost at our target rankings, and the previous head of SEO for this business, decided to give us some help…. by loading 15 or so blogs on the same server as the main site, all with poor and duplicate content, all linking to www.insuranceshoppers.ca.  Google has seen this as an attempt to scam higher rankings and removed all recent gains.  Its heartbreaking to see this hard work go down the drain.  Nothing for us to do now, but to pick ourselves up and continue.  We get paid when we get results, so no point in worrying about what has happened, we can only move forward.  The "helper" has taken the blogs down, and we have advised Google what has happened and are hopeful Google will see it as an error outside of our control.

But something we have learned….. we now instruct our clients and their web developers to NOT try and help us.  Everything we do, is totally by Google's book.  Tricks might work in the short term, but we are yet to see a site pulling such stunts, that did not eventually get caught.

Update 15 September 2009
Site penalty is removed by Google, though full rankings have not been restored.  We are behind the game but still in the race, which is great.

Update 18 december 2009
Site now at 25 for "Life Insurance" on Google.ca which is great! We are expecting to hit our target of top10 early in 2010, assuming no more "help" is provided.

Update 20 May 2010
Site now at 15 – bouncing up as high as 12 some days.