Why This Website is Number One

'This website' being our Cinnamon Edge site, which is number one for the competitive term 'online marketing Bury St Edmunds', since that's what we do and that's where we are.

A few months ago, due to an, erm, technical hitch, we had to hastily rebuild our website on a new domain. We decided to use the opportunity to concentrate on getting it to number one as quickly as possible, as a test for ourselves and to prove to you we could do it.

And we did, within about three weeks. The site is still at number one for the key phrase we targetted, but because of the speed with which it was built we didn't really trouble ourselves too much with the design and appearance. So we also proved that, as far as SEO is concerned, design in that sense doesn't matter.

But how did we get to number one? The same way you can; by following the steps outlined here, on our Marketing Manual blog. Steps one to four are there now, with more to follow.

In fact, not only did we get to number one, we even got to positions two to ten at the same time, so we actually held ALL of page one of Google for a time - just to prove we could.

We'll be rebuilding the Cinnamon Edge site again in the next few weeks so it will be a site we can be proud of, but for now it serves to prove a point - online marketing, in Bury St Edmunds or anywhere else, is about much more than building pretty websites.

Roy

This SEO Stuff Works

Hello,

Proof, if proof were needed, that SEO really works was the page one listing I got for this blog, thanks to the previous post. Within hours, if you'd Googled 'Lucid SEO', you'd have seen RoyEveritt.com at number five.

I've always said that blogs are by far the easiest sites to optimise, and when you pay some more informed attention to key words and related words and phrases, it's even easier. Of course, I wouldn't have done so well if I hadn't paid attention to David Congreave's report, Lucid SEO on Trial.

Google loves Blogger blogs, and it loves fresh, readable and relevant comment. As long as you can string some reasonably intelligent sentences between the keywords, it's got to be the easiest way to grab a front page place!

Roy

PS. The labels help, too, so always have the keywords in there as well.

At Least Something Works!

Hello again.

Frustrating isn't quite the word when you've gone to the trouble of directing people to a website, only to find you can't update the content to give them what you've promised.

The mysteries of Internet Explorer and/or Google conspired to prevent me updating this page yesterday, but I'm here now.

And the plan was to tell you how the death of email marketing has been greatly exaggerated. To point out that any other advertising medium that could deliver a twenty-four percent response would be lauded to the hills. And any that subsequently delivered over sixty percent of those responders to the advertised event would be hailed as revolutionary.

It wasn't lauded (except by me) and there's nothing very revolutionary about email marketing. I guess it depends on three things:

1. How targeted the original list is
2. How good the offer is
3. How well we write the emails

So we can probably say we got three out of three for our last campaign. Fifty attendees from a list of about three hundred people (and from just under eighty opt-ins) has to be good.

So when I finished congratulating myself for that success I could only think I should be doing this kind of thing for a living!

Then I remembered I was, decided to tell a few people about it, and hit the brick wall that either Microsoft or Google temporarily threw up in my path.

Still, I'm here now, I've told you about it and I can only ask one question: how would a twenty-four percent response to your next campaign help YOUR business?

Roy Everitt, Writing for Amazing Results