Bozeman, MT Search Engine Optimization Update

I wrote in an earlier post, about an experiment I’m currently running about local search engine optimization (SEO) in Bozeman, MT. In that post I made some predictions of what would happen after I registered with several national websites that feed local results to search engines.I predicted that the following things would happen:

1. No significant improvement for Google search engine ranking.
2. Slight increase in web traffic.
3. Better inclusion in “local” search results across all search engines.

What were the results of this search engine optimization?

1. Sorta’ true – We were bumped up from position #5 to position #4 for the search term “website development + bozeman, mt“! This was unexpected, as we already have a significant number of back-links to our website using these search terms.
2. Inconclusive – It’s still a bit early to tell whether our web traffic has increased. According to our analytics package there haven’t been any visitors who were referred from any of these directories. I suspect that this is simply because most web users would rather search Google (or another search engine) rather than wade through the category listings of something like SuperPages.com.
3. True! Google, Yahoo, Local.com, MSN Local, BOTW.org… All were very quick to add my free listing. Again, I expect that the back-link is probably more important from a SEO standpoint than the actual listing. However, many of these local directories allow their visitors to rate and post comments about your business. It’s probably a good idea to visit them time to time and see what (and if) people are saying about you. You may also wish to ask your clients to review your business on their favorite website as well.

Digg.com social media marketing experiment

This experiment underperformed wildly! There were only 5 Diggs on the article we we used. Lessons to take away from this:

1. Make sure that your content appeals to a wide range of people if you hope for it to be promoted on social media. Just because it’s important to you does not mean that most people care!
2. Begin to build your network of friends on social media websites. They are probably the quickest way for your article to become noticed and have any chance of succeeding among the thousands (millions?) of others submitted every day.
3. Keep the content short. An amazing photograph, a short blog post, an extremely unique article. These are the types of information that have any chance of making it to the top.
4. The back-link is still important though! There’s no reason not to submit your article to sites like Digg.com. It provides a valuable link back to your website using the keywords contained in your headline. However, do not expect it to be picked up and generate thousands of page views.

Well, that pretty much concludes this quick experiment. Thank you to everyone who assisted me and left kind comments! If there are significant changes to this experiment, I’ll add a quick post down the road!