This is the second installment of the newly created SEO Wednesday column here at gbradhopkins.com. As a recap, we will be discussing some techniques (mostly White Hat) that can be used to optimize your website for the major search engines and increase traffic. Tonight we will set a baseline for our current search engine rankings and start to tackle the HighRankings.com list that I mentioned last time.

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The Stats

I’m using a program called Advanced Web Ranking by Caphyon Software to check the position of my website for various keywords. Using this program I can judge not only where my site ranks, but also how competitive the space, that I’m attempting to optimize my site for, is.

For example, by using AWR, I can tell that there are roughly 8 million results for the keywords “windows tutorials” and 429,000 results for “quicktime tutorials.” This gives me a ballpark idea of how much competition there is.

The keywords that I picked for my site are the keywords that I think are related to the site. They are web design tips, mac tips, mac tutorials, pc tips, ask me, computer how to, mac, quicktime tutorials, windows tutorials, web design tutorials and gbradhopkins. Like I said, those are the keywords that I think are related to the site. In future SEO Wednesday articles we will look at some Keyword Density Analyzers to see if the keywords that I think are related to the site is reflected in the content of the site.

Here is a link to the Keyword Overview Report generated by AWR. View Report. A quick look at the report reveals that I have really no rankings at all for any of my keywords beyond “mac tutorials” in DMOZ and “gbradhopkins” in all of the search engines. The good news is that the site is at least listed in each of the engines. Its a start.

If your site is not listed in any of the search engines then I would suggest that you submit the site to Google, and suggest it to the DMOZ directory. That’s where you would start.

Now, on to the HighRankings.com list.

  1. Do not purchase a new domain unless you have to. My site has been running at gbradhopkins.com for some time so this does not necessarily apply to my situation. But, I did run the website on my .Mac server and a copy of the site remains there at this time. If you are starting fresh, then you have no choice but be patient. When it comes to SEO you have to be patient. The HighRankings.com list indicates that the wait is 9 - 12 months before your website shows up for the keywords that you want.

At this point I’m going to stop for this post. Next week we’ll continue with our list and see if we’ve made any progress on our Search Engine Rankings.

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