Until recently I always imagined that good SEO took time to turn around and achieve real results, but based on my output for a friend over the last 3 or more weeks I think I have to turn this notion on its head.
So, you ask yourself: “Is it really possible to get your site well ranked in Google within a very short time?”
Until today I would have told you no, but based on the experience I am about to describe, I think it is clear and simple that you can. And that with the right approach and attitude to the process you can get what you want and need. So here is how I went about getting Jensen Headshots (www.jensenheadshots.co.uk) up to the front of Google for our initial choice of keywords and phrases.
Setting Up A Domain
About a month ago, whilst preparing to setup my friend’s new site, I decided to register a new .co.uk domain for a couple of years and a .com for 1 year which is redirected to the .co.uk. I did this primarily because the web site was for a business in the London, and so best to focus on the UK region, whilst I registered the .com because people don’t always remember the domain as a .co.uk and so it’s a redirect that makes life a lot simpler for them.
In terms of the choice of the domain, it involved making it unique for the business, and including at least 1 target keyword, in this case ‘Headshots’. I could have added more, but felt this would have made the site seem too service specific, and less relevant across the board to a slew of potential customers. Beyond this, there was no special decision making. The default registration period for a .co.uk is 2 years and 1 year for a .com so I made no special choice to register them beyond those time frames.
Setting Up The Web Site / Page
The primary aim, was to set up a page that could draw potential customers, hook them, and induce them to call and book a headshot photo session. In order to ensure maximum exposure for the desired keywords and terms based on research using the Google External Keywords tool, I started building the single page from the top down.
Beginning my code with the Page Title, Meta Tags and Description and from there, thinking about the H1, h2, and associated text-based content for the page I built up a strong association between the page, site and those terms pre-selected. In addition, I worked in the relevant keywords into every aspect of links, images and the semantic markup. Everywhere you look you can see words such as actor, headshot, spotlight, London, etc; all cementing the case for the relevance of the business.
The idea of building a single page web site, almost flew in the face of everything I knew and had already learned about SEO, but it was inevitable, given the stark lack of content, besides existing head shot photos of actors. Ordinarily I would recommend building as complex a sitemap of web pages as possible, but in this case, because of a less than saturated search result returned by Google, it seemed like there was less of need, so the site would likely fare okay in the overall equation.
Letting Google & Everyone Know
Once the page was in place on the web server I went about setting up the domain in my Google Webmaster Tools and ensuring there were the requisite robots.txt and sitemap files in situ. I then went out online, and set up the site on Google Local Business Center and wrote up some reviews on sites like Qype to help reinforce the importance of the site for the selection of keywords, as well as to help draw attention to it with back links that with luck Google robots might follow, and thus place the new site in its index.
Other elements to the SEO process performed at this stage included linking from a couple of my own web sites, more specifically their homepages with keyword based links. beyond this there was precious little to do, but what seemed like be patient. What else could I do really?
Proven Results
All-in-all it took about a week for the site to appear in Google’s index, although this didn’t mean organic traffic was immediately being generated based on the chosen keywords. It took another week or two for that to start happening, which I noticed in Google Analytics. Did I use voodoo? The answer is clearly NO. I just used common sense and good solid web design skills, with a focus and a target in mind. Without that I wouldn’t have been able to achieve the goal required, and I am looking forward to seeing further growth of the site.
Part of what made the project simple and the goal more readily attainable, was the approach that revolved around targeting a very specific geographic region, something I have used to great effect before, and the fact that although popular, the keyword searches only turn up on average tens/hundreds of thousands of results, and only in a few cases, well over 1 million. That being said, the results were by no means a slam dunk or foregone conclusion, you can NEVER pre-judge what Google may or may not do with your site.
The Take Home …
So what can you yourself take home from this experience. I think it proves that based on the business in hand or the topic, it isn’t hard to quickly dominate them, given the right intent and focus on the job. Anyone can come in and trounce the market place and start driving traffic to their site at any time, and understanding how, and what the present incumbents are up to helps with this process too. Using available information to define your decisions is always the best approach.
So what’s next? Well from my perspective, there are additional angles to take full advantage of in the form of free adverts on Craigslist and other city specific forums, as well as ensuring that the site turns up in the Business Listings when searches for the keywords should be a good match. Perhaps you have some ideas of your own!
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I am, for want of a better word, a web developer. Practising since '96 and
focused on front and back-end work with a slant for optimisation.
I love music, art, and helping people, traits which I hope are borne out here.
Read more about me and this blog on the 
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