SEO Case Study: Launching A New Website

First of all, I'd like to thank all of you who have bought my ebook, The Dao of SEO. Your positive feedback has been much appreciated. But selling to a captive audience is the easy part. Now I face the same daunting task as many of you, getting rankings for a brand new website. It's been years since I've had to worry about that for my own sites as they are now well established. But my book website is just another 'new kid on the block' and not likely to get much respect.

In the coming weeks, I will use this newsletter to keep you posted on its 'rite of passage' in the hope that I might at the same time share some useful insights. Some of you are probably more experienced with press releases than I am but one of the first things I did for the site was to issue a press release. I'd never done that before and frankly I still have little notion as to the ultimate value of it. But I'm starting to form a picture. Indeed, in the blog entry just below this one you will find an interview with my press release writer.

So, here's the story. I have a new website. As an SEO, I figured right off that there'd be too much competition for search phrases like 'seo book' and even 'seo ebook' might be a bit tough given how new the site is. So, I started by focusing on a fairly small search phrase 'best seo ebook'. I wasn't too surprised to see an early ranking for it on Msn, the most optimization-driven engine. Indeed, as I write this the site is number three on Msn for that phrase. But I fully expected that it would take several months to get such a ranking on Google, even for a fairly small search phrase . After all, the site is not trusted yet. It has no link popularity to speak of, no dmoz.org listing, no Yahoo Directory listing and the domain name was only registered a few weeks ago. A real 'new kid on the block' and I know that simple optimization is just not enough on Google. But I was very pleasantly surprised today, just a few days after my press release, to find I am #4 on Google for 'best seo ebook' and even more shocked to find myself #12 for the more potent 'seo ebook'. By Wednesday evening, it was #6 on Yahoo as well (best seo ebook). You can check these but they may well shift up at down at this point (keep in mind the engines have more than one data-centre so not everyone sees the same results).

But the story really begins a few days earlier. Within a couple of days of issuing the press release, the press releases themselves were making it to the front pages (e.g. here's one). On Google, I found one in the number 14 position and another article ranking number 20 for 'best seo ebook'. I didn't quite expect that. Two, page-two listings on Google may not mean a lot but it was a beginning. I wasn't sure how many organizations released the notice but I found four over the next couple of days.

But then, all of a sudden, dozens of other web sites were mentioning the book. The phrase "dao of seo" did not exist until I used it to title my book for it's been easy to check for it just by using double quotation marks around "dao of seo". I found the following:

Tuesday evening: mentions on 594 websites
Wednesday morning: mentions on 636 websites
Wednesday night: mentions on 1,490 websites
Thursday morning: mentions on 714 websites
Thursday night: mentions on 1,320 websites
Friday morning: mentions on 665 websites
Saturday morning: mentions on 541 websites
Saturday night: mentions on 3,370 websites
Sunday afternoon: mentions of 6,360 websites

Throughout this time it has steadily gone up on Yahoo, over 2,000 at this writing. You can see the 'ups and downs' above for Google; I suspect that it's because some of these web pages are fading into Google Supplemental after a few days. But I'd say that's still making quite a splash and almost certainly must account for the sudden rankings (though, of course, there wouldn't be useful, findable rankings if the press release wasn't written with sensitivity to the site's main keywords. A press release should follow optimization, not precede it. As a result of optimizing first, I was able to make sure that the keyword 'best' appeared in the press release. So, it's no accident that the site is ranking for 'best seo ebook'.

I'm not sure how long these rankings will last. They may well start to slip. It makes some sense that I would rank well if I'm suddenly newsworthy but today's news is tomorrow's trash. And, not one of the pages discussing my book and linking to my website have any link popularity. They are new pages so one would not expect them to have link popularity in the first place. But to some extent, a link is a link even if it's PRO (zero). By the way, I do have some back-links from web pages that have PR but those are due to partner links. They may also be slightly contributing to the quick rankings but my experience tells me that it's the press release that has played the crucial role in obtaining these early rankings.

Thanks for the feedback relating to my mention of the Firefox Browser. Kristin writes: "Thanks for the links for the Firefox browser. I've been using Firefox for several years now and love it. My son told me about it. It's great because you don't have all of those pop-ups." Martin writes: "Hehe... yeah. I've also learned that Firefox is a killer browser with the right plugins. Can't believe I haven't listened to others who have used firefox before. It's superb for internet marketing and SEO :)"

But if you get it, folks, add on the Groowe toolbar.

See the next blog for an interview with my press release writer Christine O'Kelly.