New Client – ShedSpot – works started on 18 August 2009, target top 10 on Google.com.au for "Sheds" and "Garden Sheds"

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 acehived in 2010.