Here’s some early results for SEO improvements for seasoned pioneers. Its early days yet and as you will see these rankings will improve considerably as we go through the year. We’ll share with you the improvements and the actions we take each month.
At this stage the metrics we are monitoring for improvement are:-
-Increases in the levels of natural traffic
-Increases in the number of keyphrases rankings are achieved for
-Increases in the rankings of all target keyphrases
-Increases in rankings of target keyphrases
If you can recall we have done some preliminary SEO on the site, but as each month passes during 2013 we will be doing more work prioritised around important keyphrases and content. Also there’s some important foundation level work still to be done – regarding site urls and a few other items and Matt, the owner is considering whether to do this work or to postpone it until the site gets redeveloped which is part of the plan for 2013.
Here are the results:-
Traffic Increases
Here we have a couple of comparisons:
19th November (when we started work) – 17th January with the previous period (20th September – 18th November)
Organic Visits:
19th November – 17th January = 9,301
20th September – 18th November = 9,096
Increase of 2.25%
Previous Year (This will help us understand Seasonal Trends):
19th November 2012 – 17th January 2013 = 9,301
19th November 2011 – 17th January 2012 = 8,717
Increase 6.70%
As we can see there have been a few small increases in traffic already and it is very early days.
Increases in number of keywords ranked
When we look on Google Analytics we can see how many phrases people have used to visit our website. So this is more useful information:
Keyphrases Visited For:
19th November – 17th January = 2,408
20th September – 18th November = 2,393
Increase of 15 phrases in a short time period.
Here we can see a few extra phrase have been searched for.
Increases in rankings of target keyphrases
Here is a link to the Original Ranking Report
Here is a link to the Latest Ranking Report
When we first started we had 23 top 5 listings and 33 top 10 listings. We now have 25 top 5 listings (2 more) and 41 top 10 listings (8 more).
Increases in visits for targeted keyphrases:
New: 19th November – 17th January
Old: 20th September – 18th November
Some homepage phrases:
Spices:
New: 267 Visits
Old: 206 Visits
Increase: 29.61%
Spices Online:
New: 116 Visits
Old: 103 Visits
Increase: 12.62%
Spices UK:
New: 62 Visits
Old: 35 Visits
Increase: 77.14%
Seasoning:
New: 38 Visits
Old: 5 Visits
Increase: 660%
Buy Spices Online:
New: 33 Visits
Old: 14 Visits
Increase: 135.71%
Some Inner Page Phrases
African Spices:
New: 22 Visits
Old: 5 Visits
Increase: 340%
African Spice:
New: 18 Visits
Old: 0 Visits
Increase: 1800%
Cooking Sauces:
At this point we need to remember that SEO is a slow process and there sometimes there are obstacles to prevent achieving a website’s full potential.
For example with this website the owner has encountered a number of issues when trying to change the existing site’s content to incorporate SEO changes as the content management system didn’t allow this so it had to be passed to the developer, which of course involves a cost. Also some of the more technical aspects required for on-site optimisation would cause significant changes because of the structure and way the site is linked to other objects, so these changes would also involve significant costs. This all points to the importance of also considering SEO when initially setting up any site.
Although the metrics are good to include when looking as a website’s progress on search engines there are lots more factors we can look at. As mentioned above when monitoring a website’s progress there are seasonal trends that need to be taken into account but obviously there are also other factors that influence search volumes such as news, fashion, economy etc…
So each month from now we’ll report on the additional work which we do and also the improvements in these metrics. At some point we’ll add other metrics as well – conversions and sales increases, for example.
Please get in touch if you have any questions: Jan – 01928 788 100
Please find all other relevant posts here:-
Post 1: SEO exposed and Interview with Seasoned Pioneers
Post 2: SEO Process and Objectives
Post 3: Technical Analysis and Audit
Post 4: Keyphrase and Traffic Analysis
Post 5: SEO Blueprint report
Post 6: Implementation programme
Post 7: SEO Results
