Purple Widget – An SEO Experiment

Of course this site, Purple Widget, is sort of an SEO case study in itself but I have a specific example of an e-commerce site I’ve done work on that is finally starting to pay off.

The site started from the ground up – new domain name and all in the fall of 2007.  It’s built on an e-comm software package that does an OK job of automating SEO but far from great and offers no manual editing of page titles, meta tags on product pages.  And changing landing pages takes some HTML coding knowledge and getting under the hood.  And since the owner of the site – a one man show – has no ability to do this himself my ability to do a lot of this coding helped out.  But still, I was facing (and still face) some challenges from the software.  But we shall overcome. 

He had no real SEO on the site for the first several months and was literally selling nothing.  Tens of thousand of dollars to get the site designed and set up – no sales.  Nowhere to go but up.  And, by the way he had no budget for SEO.  About 4 hours a month for several months (and that including doing a lot of the work with some coding rather than just data entry for key areas of the site) – then even less.  That’s part of the reason that this process may seem slow – it was far from an all out full-time effort but it was certainly better than nothing.

I won’t go into extensive details about every step that was done but it started with keyword research of course so the best phrases were being targeted.  The next focus was on creating some landing pages and adding some text to the dynamic category pages of an e-comm site.  Some improved internal linking with good anchor text put in where appropriate.  Next some attention was paid to how product names were entered and how category names were sculpted – with the limitations of the e-comm software these naming conventions were important (this is pretty standard with e-comm sites).  We then worked to improve the product descriptions of individual product pages – the site can still do a much better job of this but one area of weakness for many e-comm sites is lack of content on product pages so this is a chance to set this site apart from the competition.  Link building has been a part of the process as well as I’ve found industry specific blogs and attempted to at least exchange links (oh no – not link exchanges…..I know, I know but they still have some value if done well and done in moderation) if not get one way links.  I submitted to several decent directories early in the process – not sure I’d focus as much on this now but remember this site did not exist less than 2 years ago – directories provide one-way links.

So what has all this led to?  Slowly but surely traffic has increased, links have increased (more exposure brings more exposure!), and most importantly conversions have increased quite a bit!

I’ll start with the most important analytics – sales!  Remember, 6 months $0 sales when the site launched.  In the last 6 weeks (as of this posting of course) the site has generated over $5k in sales – and the owner notes that HALF of his sales start on the website and end with a phone call that analytics doesn’t capture.  My advice of the big phone number on every page of the site certainly makes sense now!  I’ve talked to him about capturing those sales in analytics but for a variety of reasons, he’s not interested.  But just know that the dollar values I discuss here are only about 50% of his sales right now!

So again, from no sales the first 6 months of existence the last 6 months (which of course includes x-mas sales) website analytics saw nearly $14k in sales!  So that $5k the last 6 weeks actually is more impressive now!  So sales are finally going well!

Now for the more SEO analytics type stats that us SEO Marketing geeks like:

First I’ll compare Jan 1 – Feb 15 ‘09 to July 1 – Aug 15 ‘08
(6 week periods that don’t include X-Mas)
And all stats are of coures non-paid keywords:

Conversions +26%
Total Transactions +125%
Total Products Sold +196%
So not only are we seeing more traffic, we’re seeing better traffic!

Same periods compared – sales that started with a Google search UP 213% in terms of revenue and up 87% with Yahoo! traffic.

Search engine traffic is up 17% – perhaps the least impressive number but let’s look at another number now.

Compare the first 6 weeks of 2009 to the first 6 weeks of 2008.  Year to date comparissions:

Visits up 83% Overall
Search engine traffic up 31% 
Google Traffic up 292%
Yahoo Traffic up 108%

So – as is often a question on Purple Widget – what’s my point?

Simple: SEO Works
It may work slowly when the budget is limited, and your website software is far from ideal but it does work.  Have patience and keep working on it – SEO does work!

I thought I’d vary the subject matter just a bit today.  There will be some SEO ties but the main subject is really more of a marketing, brand management concern than anything else.

Recently, and perhaps with more to come in the future in the face of global economic concerns I’ve gotten (or seen) e-mails from companies promoting themselves as competitors have failed or changed services.

These marketing efforts have dual impact.  One, they provide news to customers – maybe you didn’t know company X no longer did Y.  And they offer a solution.  Since X no longer can do Y for you, let us do it!  Taking it even another step a coupon or discount of somekind goes even further…try us and save 15% for example.

The two that come to mind from my recent inbox are Staples and FedEx.

It seems, and I did not know this until I got this e-mail, Office Depot is closing 112 stores – the e-mail had the story in it!  Staples is making me aware of this and reminding me I can always count on Staples.  No specifc offer but very clear links to find a store and about their benefits of free delivery and their rewards program among others.  

I have also gotten several e-mails from FedEx reminding and informing me of changes at DHL. 
The first e-mail I got started with:

It’s official: DHL is discontinuing its U.S. domestic-only air and ground services. If you’ve been shipping with DHL, chooseFedEx to make the transition as smooth as possible for you, your suppliers and your customers.

DHL has cancelled its money-back guarantee for international shipments to the U.S.

But FedEx Express still offers a money-back guarantee on international shipments if we miss our published (or quoted, as in the case of FedEx® International Next Flight) delivery time by even 60 seconds*.

  I received two other e-mails after this that reminded me and offered links to FedEx.com to promote what they can offer me.  I never got any such e-mail from UPS.  Did FedEx do any PPC for searches around DHL job cuts or DHL stopping service, etc…?  I don’t know the answer but I bet it wouldn’t have been very expensive to do so.

How does this tie back to SEO?  Well, I’m talking about on the web and I’ve linked to these companies.  Many other likely are as well.

Opportunities are everywhere – don’t miss them.

Is it too late to help your website in organic search for the Holidays?

There are a few ways to answer that question.  First,  this is getting posted in mid-December so the answer is no.  Unless of course we don’t mean Christmas….there is time to improve for Easter or St Patrick’s Day.

But I think my favorite way to answer is to simply say yes because Christmas comes every year and in December of 2008 you can absolutely effect change for the Holidays…..Christmas 2009 that is…
Perhaps that’s just my nice way of saying “no, you’ve waited way too long to start thinking about SEO for Christmas shopping traffic”.

Search Engine Optimization is an ongoing process that takes time to develop and needs to be nurtured.  Unless your a site like CNN your website isn’t getting crawled all that often.  So the first thing that has to happen is that your pages need to be crawled with your new changes in place.  This takes time.  Then your changes need to be put into the engines index, this takes time.  Then your “new” pages need to be moved into multiple data centers for the search engines.  This takes time.

Being a well optimized site means always being a well optimized site, not just at Christmas time or other peak times for your business.  Have quality content that attracts links, have unique page titles and meta descriptions throughout your site that are keyword focused based on quality keyword research.  Make sure your site is technically sound, can be crawled easily and follows Google best practices.  

I’m going to go back to keywords for just a moment.  I can’t stress enough the importance of good keyword research and using the right keywords.  This very quick example makes my point.  It’s the little things that make the difference.
Giftcards are pretty popular for the holidays, a quick easy present.  You can stuff a gift card in stockings and they’re great for employees – if for no other reason, they don’t take up much space when you’ve got them around the office before the X-Mas party.  So if you sell gift cards most certainly you have a page dedicated to them on your website, hopefully at www.yourwebsite.com/gift-cards with a great, keyword rich title and great text based content. 
Did you notice something in my last few sentences??  Take a another read.  Did you notice it?  I used the term ‘gift cards’ 3 different ways.  The all seemed the same to you, certainly didn’t confuse you at all – in fact you probably didn’t even notice.  To Google those are 3 distinct searches, and there are other variations I didn’t use that would be the same thing to nearly everybody – except computers.  So which one is best?   That’s where keyword reserach comes in….here’s a quick look at estimated daily search volume in Oct/Nov.  These aren’t absolutely values but the comparable volume is very important to note.

‘gift cards’  -  3,411

‘gift card’ – 119

‘giftcard’ – 27

‘giftcards’ – 27

Which would you rather rank high for? 

So with all that being said; with the “right answer” of not waiting too long to put good SEO practices in place and focusing year round there is something you can do…
Maybe not on Dec 17th but maybe only a few weeks sooner.   
And I’m not talking about PPC (pay-per-click), although it can help about 30 minutes after you start – that’s also when the billing starts.  PPC is an entirely different subject for another time and place.
What I’m talking about is the early December meeting that is about generating more traffic, quickly and inexpensively.  You know the one I mean.  The one that leads to a call to an SEO like me and often gets the answers I noted above. 
But you can do something that is cheap, has quick results and can get you attention quickly.  It can get you links and traffic.
Go Viral!

Create content or do something so amazing, so outrageous, so funny that people simply must share it and talk about.   And when I say talk about, I mean link to it!  Have you seen WillitBlend.com?  This is a classic example of viral marketing.  They’ll put just about anything they can think of in a blender – iPhones, golf balls, pennies – you name, they’ll blend it.  This site – a site about blenders has over 53,000 links to it!  It’s been up since Nov 2006…that’s a lot of links, fast.

So what can you do?  Well that’s for you to figure out.  But think like this – what’s the last thing someone in your business or industry would do??  Do it.  Put it on video, put it on your website, put it on YouTube – optimize the listing and then think of the next to last thing somebody would ever expect to see from your industry – do that.   Then do it again, and again.  You can make a video around the office with a webcam that costs twenty bucks, YouTube is free, press releases can be free.  Have people in the office send it to their friends – hey they do it anyway with your corporate e-mail for other people’s viral marketing might as well be helping the company.  You can even go crazy offline.  Make sure the local news knows about it and if you get lucky comes out with cameras – and for every story on the news and every story in the newspaper there’s a website with the same story, with links – valuable links.  Have a Santa carwash, offer free gift cards for anyone dressed up as an elf that visits your store, create a video around your office where every single person dressed as an elf or Santa – except maybe one guy to add a twist, have a Santa suit contest, come to work dressed up as a gift, company snowball fight.  Think outside the box (don’t we all love that expression) – in fact think so far outside the box you can’t even see the box anymore.  Then get it out on the web.  Get it on YouTube, in Facebook, on Flickr, MySpace, in press releases, etc…
Don’t stop with holidays – do it year round.  Do it the day after Christmas, craziest gift, things you must return, sled damage to your office, everybody at the office brings their worst gift – again, get it on video and get it out there.

When it’s done well a viral campaign can take off and page huge dividends.  Don’t give up.  If the first doesn’t work, or the first 10 don’t go great keep trying.  There’s a few reasons why.  First, a little bit is better than nothing.  Even if a “campaign” only gets you a few links it’s still a few links and getting a few one-way links is worth the time.  The other reason is that when one does take off, when done right it can also generate attention to your previous campaigns and could give them new life and they could take off anytime.  It takes luck sometimes and maybe one gets lucky and that leads to content that was actually better than the one that finally took off also taking off.

So don’t ignore SEO year round then hope a few tweaks in mid-December can payoff, focus on SEO year round and from the beginning – when done well it will pay off when traffic goes up for holiday shopping.  And remember, it’s never a bad idea to go viral!

So I’m driving to work again today and as I merge from I-435 to I-70 (about 1/3 the way to the office) I see a Kansas state trooper will now be behind me on I-70.  So my normal driving speed of 75-80 mph will be reduced today to the neighborhood  of 70 mph (the speed limit on this stretch of highway) – actually about 1 mph slower than the officer.  

Once again I thought about SEO.  Everyday I drive about 10 mph over the speed limit.  I know there are state troopers out there, or local police.  I see them sometimes sitting and shooting radar of course.  Yet, I still exceed the speed limit.  Maybe because I know of all the cars out there the odds are in my favor of not getting caught.  And even if I do zoom by a cop at 80 mph, maybe he isn’t really paying attention or doesn’t really care.  Maybe he’s a liberal and happy I’m driving a Prius so he lets me fly by….who knows.  And just as an aside, I drive a Prius because I don’t want to spend money on gas.  It’s nice that I’m saving the environment and all, but (despite a few social liberal tendencies) I’m no bleeding heart, the government must and will save us liberal I can assure you.  But today, seeing the state trooper car driving next to me I slowed down and stayed right at the speed limit.  So if the highway were search engine optimization, like it was yesterday, then the trooper is Matt Cutts.  If you don’t know who Matt Cutts is you have really stumbled onto the wrong blog.  Or you just really enjoy my ever so clever blurbs.

So do we speed (buy a link, stuff a keyword, etc…) even though we know the police (Google, Matt Cutts) are out there but since we don’t see them watching us we flirt with the white hat/gray hat/black hat line?  But as soon as we know we’re being watched (have a state trooper driving next to you) do you make darn sure you’re following every Google best practice?  

I may discuss in closed door meetings internally some “risky” techniques but I’m sure not going to stand up at an SEO conference session that Matt Cutts is sitting in and say “I’ve found a way to get one over on Google by doing this….”

So I’m driving to work this morning and I notice (because I’m always on the lookout for such things) a state trooper sitting on the side of the highway with his lights flashing as if he had someone pulled over.  Since troopers are often like deer, there’s usually more than one I was backing off the accelerator a bit already.  As I got closer I realized he (or she I suppose, don’t mean to assume or be sexist) did not have anybody pulled over.  Since this at the top of a long subtle hill that blocked the view of the road in front of us I wondered if there was traffic ahead over the hill….just in case I started to move over to the right since I knew there was an exit coming up I could bail out on and avoid the traffic.  Sure enough, as I got to the point where I could see over the hill there was a 3 lane wide parking lot on the interstate.  

So what did I do?  I finished moving to the right to exit, switched to the GPS Nav system in my car and asked for an alternate route to work.  Since my in car GPS doesn’t have traffic I pulled out my G1 cell phone and quickly (and safely of course) pulled up Google Maps with the traffic overlay turned on.  In just a few minutes I knew that the traffic only lasted a few miles and so my detour needed to only take me a few miles down the road and I could get back on the highway that was the best route to my office.  I was a bit frustrated by my in car nav system that kept giving strange detour directions as I traveled on what I knew to be the best route since I am familiar enough with this part of town to take this short detour.  Now I know, from experience that my GPS Nav would have gotten me there and perhaps even quicker but it just kept shouting (okay, it doesn’t literally shout) turn here, turn here as it reset everytime I passed it’s recommend turn and took my own strategy.  A few minutes later I was back on the interstate and at work only a few minutes later than normal.  It’s entirely possible that I would have arrived at work at exactly the same time had I just sat in the traffic waiting for it to clear – remember my Google Maps on my cell phone showed it only lasted a few miles – but maybe not.  Of my many pet peeves, sitting in traffic is one of the bigger ones.  Even though my detour may have taken a few minutes longer I was moving the entire time and not just sitting there.

I promise I’m headed to a point here related to search engine optimization but I want to make a few observations first.  Actually just one and I’m not sure why really but here it goes.  I recognize that what I call traffic here in Kansas City would be a dream for most people in most big cities in the US.  We have a few spots that get bad, but even that is nothing compared to major cities and with where my office is located and my house I drive a 24 mile route that is very low in traffic.  A 22 minute drive on a Sunday morning (with no Chiefs game) is only about 30 minutes at 8:00 AM during the week.  So, no traffic.  That’s why when I see any I try to avoid it – I’m spoiled.  I’ve lived in Las Vegas where traffic is constant and a nightmare at it’s peak.  I’ve driven in LA in traffic a few times (and never will again if I can avoid it) so I know that any complaint of a 10 minute delay because of traffic here will get very little sympathy from many. 

As promised…..my point…..

So, traffic is just fine – moving very smoothly and quickly.  A few lane changes here and there to keep moving since idiots continue to just use the left lane for their own personal day spa of driving – THE LEFT LANE IS FOR PASSING ONLY!  Sorry.  Refocused now.  I need to slow down sometimes to adjust to things around me, then speed up when the opportunity is there and all the while paying attention to everything and being safe.  Had a detour, used two different tools, adjusted and despite several detour options – all of which probably would have helped me – stayed on my planned path with patience, found my way back to the main road and continued onward.
So now for a moment pretend I hadn’t told my little driving to work story and read the above again.  Does this sound like an SEO plan?  As I was driving, and detouring I started to relate it to SEO (yes, I think about SEO too much) and it prompted this post.  I’ll drive home again tonight and back to work again tomorrow.

SEO is like driving in traffic.  Be safe, slow down when needed, speed up when available, be ready for detours and aware of options, use tools available, stay focused, get back on course.  And then do it again the next day, the day after, then again the next day….etc, etc, etc…

And just to make one final point, I record all my gas mileage and maintenance.  Reporting is important in SEO too  ;)

If you came just for clever analogy and story you can stop reading.   But because I haven’t in a while I’m going to a quick recap of rankings here for Purple Widget.  I’ll do a more in-depth look rather soon (or not so soon if I’m being honest) but here’s where we stand today.

Term “purple widget”

Google #1 and #2
MSN Live #1 and #2
Yahoo #1
ASK #1 and #2

So like I said when this blog started.  I can rank you #1 for purple widget, but if nobody is searching for purple widget it won’t do you any good.
Total Visits last 30 Days: 33
Visits from Search Engines: 14

As always, thanks for visiting PurpleWidget.com!  You may now start holding your breath until my next post.

They are everywhere.  In email, on the web and on the phone.  My colleague, a fellow SEO guru, just got one of these calls that prompted me to talk a bit about it.  Search Engine Optimization gets a bad rap too often and it’s because of these kinds of scams.  The reality is that there are a lot of steps that can be taken to help a website be more effective in where and how often they rank in search engine results.  This, in a poorly described nutshell, is SEO.  SEO is not a trick (although there are tricks – aka black hat SEO but once again a conversation for another time), it’s not a magic bullet, there is no “inside info” or special “hook ups” to get your site highly ranked, quickly and legitimately in Google or any other real search engine.

So if you have a website, or sometimes just an e-mail address you’ve probably seen or heard (they cold call often) something like – GET YOUR SITE TO #1 ON GOOGLE in 24 HOURS! I’ve worked with clients who have had these scam artists contact them, I’ve been contacted and colleagues have been contacted.  For myself, and those in the industy – heck even Matt Cutts gets them and he’s blogged about it - these can be very entertaining because in nearly all instances we know more, much more, than the person scamming us.  But for a website owner looking for more traffic and more sales you could be vulnerable to these false claims.  There’s a few things to ask that will pretty quickly expose them.   

First, when they promise they can rank you #1 on Google ask them for what keyword or keywords.  A #1 ranking for purple widget (remember, the whole reason this site exists) is rather worthless because nobody searches for purple widget.  Keywords are the most important aspect of SEO, if you aren’t focusing on the right keywords your efforts are going nowhere – you’re simply spinning your wheels.  So make sure their answer is for a keyword with some actual value.  If they say your company name or your domain name it’s a scam.  You probably already rank # 1 for your own domain name or business name and unless your a major brand this high ranking won’t have great value.  Value in organic search comes from high volume phrases, usually much more generic phrases.  If they do say they can rank you high for quality generic terms this doesn’t mean it’s not a scam, it’s just a better than average scam so far.

Another good question is to ask how they’re going to do it.  Odds are they won’t have answer or it’s a secret.  Both bad signs.  And lastly, in terms of basic red flags if they use the guarantee at all you’re in trouble.  Nobody can guarantee anything in the search engines, any reputable SEO specialist will agree with this.

When you do get calls or e-mails like this, making crazy promises and guarantees about SEO and natural search results it’s one of three things I believe and they’re all bad:

1 – Straight out scam.  They’ll take your money, do nothing and they’ll disappear so that you’ll never be able to get in touch with them.

2 – They’re going to work with completely worthless keywords that will provide you absolutely no value.

3 – Somewhere in the fine print of a contract or agreement will be a clause that protects them and even though they may have “tried diligently” you’ll not be seeing results and you won’t be able to get your money back.

It’s ashame that SEO has been given such a bad name because through hard work and well focused efforts there are so many things that can help so many websites perform better in search engines and help businesses thrive.

There’s much more to it and there’s a great article I recommend 7 Signs of an SEO Scam that goes into more warning signs and red flags.

One of the reasons for my purple widget SEO experiment was to gain more knowledge about blogs and how they worked and they performed in search engines.  I had a bit of an idea about both but sometimes I learn better by doing (and sometimes I learn by getting punched in the head over and over) so I’ve launched a few blogs including this one and am getting smarter (sometimes my head hurts).  One thing I’ve learned that definetely makes my head hurt is that WordPress sure comes out with new versions alot.  Seems like every time I log in to post (and I don’t do this as often as I should, but still) there is a new version I should update to.  Luckily, for lazy people (I mean effort economists) like me there is a great plugin called WordPress Automatic Upgrade that I absolutely love!  It gives me a link right above the WordPress notice telling me to update and then walks me through an easy 7-8 click upgrade process.  Presto, I’m upgraded for another 2 days until the next WordPress update. 

So why do I bring this up?  I’m glad you asked.

As you’ve already noticed I gave a link to the tool I find so valuable.  Not only did I link to them I used keyword rich text.  I would imagine that WordPress Automatic Upgrade is a pretty targeted term for them and since that is what my link says that URL will get some help being known as an WordPress Automatic Upgrade authority because they have another link pointing to them with that title.  Yes, a regular link without the keyword text would have helped as well but not as much.  So again, why did I bring this up?  Luckily for you, I have arrived at my point.

The bottom line is simple, the website http://techie-buzz.com/wordpress-plugins/wordpress-automatic-upgrade-plugin.html (hey another link to them!) created a great tool (aka – great content) and I (someone with a website) linked to them!  They didn’t ask me to, they didn’t pay me to (although I am not above this, but that will be the subject of a future post – should I be above it?), I simply linked to them because I wrote about them and I wrote about them because they had something of awesome value!

Now I’m off to upgrade WordPress again, automatically!

By the way, the fact that this entire post was about upgrading WordPress automatically those little links have even more value because the content surrounding the links is highly relevant as well.  Pretty cool, huh?!?!

Even though it has evolved from the single most important, easily manipulated method for improving search engine rankings it is still important that other sites on the World Wide Web link to your site.  It tells search engines that other sites think your site has value.  It’s a “vote” for your website.  And the more prominent and valuable the originating site is the more value it has for your site as a vote.  The art of link building is a unique and extensive part of SEO and this post will not begin to scratch the surface.  But I will point out a few basics of link building.

The first of which is to talk briefly about the basic kinds of links – again, this is not all inclusive by any means.  One of the most common, and in many cases the least valuable, is a link exchange.  You put a link up on your site for me and I’ll do the same for you.  There is some value as long as the links are related.  For example if your site is about basketball and I sell basketball shoes there is some value to each of our readers to know about the other site.  But since most of these types of links appear on link pages with dozens, if not hundreds of other links the value is very minimal and fading.  There are more effective ways to do what is still essentially link exchanging but for this post on Purple Widget I’m trying to stick to some basics.  Perhaps at a later date I’ll explore link building more in-depth.  

Another popular linking method that fooled search engines for about 5 minutes is what’s called 3-way or triangle linking.  My site A links to your site B and your site links to my site C.  Again, if your linking to related quality content there is some value but in many cases search engines can sniff out this 3-way triangle link so the attempt to have links appear as one-way is really not helping you much.  

Lastly in my very high level overview is the every popular one-way link.  Someone, hopefully an authoritative highly trusted website, sees something on your site of value to them and their audience and links to you.  One-way links (like all links) come in many shapes and sizes and can be secured in a great many ways but as you’ve probably figured out by now I won’t be going extensively into these methods.  The one thing I will say that is probably the most valuable advice I can give on link building: Having GREAT content with value to a wide audience will get you links.

One of the many, many methods of getting links is to comment on articles on subjects related to your site.  Many of the links provided by comment posts are “nofollow” so they’ll have no strict SEO benefit but they can gain you traffic and exposure and since you’re in a subject related to your site this exposure could lead to something more – like someone seeing your site and deciding to link to it on their site because you have great content!  So how does this relate to PurpleWidget.com?  I’m glad you asked.  This is one method I’ve begun to use for Purple Widget.  Recently when commenting on SEO articles I’ve been using the name Purple Widget as my name and of course this site as the URL with my comment.  And although so far I’ve only done it a few times it’s already working as Link Diagnosis shows 2 links back to me from these comments.

Similarly, your profile and signature in forums that you regularly (and being a solid contributing member is important) participate in can provide links to your site and Purple Widget will start doing this as well in the near future.

I know what you’re thinking – the title of this post is Link Building and Stuff and you’ve given us great link building info but where’s my stuff!!??!  Here it is….hope you’re not disappointed.

Let’s check our rankings.  Even though we all know there’s a lot more to SEO and search engine success than simply your rankings it starts with rankings and they’re fun to check here is where Purple Widget ranks today.

Term: Purple Widget
Google #1 and #2
Yahoo! #1
Live – Not Indexed Still
Ask #1 and #2

Term: SEO Experiment
Google #25
Yahoo! #22
Live – Still not indexed
Ask – Not in Top 50

See – that was fun!

Next up for Purple Widget will be some press releases distributed via free pr distribution services.  Stay tuned!

A corporate blog, or any blog related to your website – no matter the subject can be a great tool for your website and your business.  In fact, somewhat like purple widget, it can BE your business.

But no matter what you’re using your blog for, don’t neglect it!  Don’t do what I’ve done, stop posting for nearly 3 weeks.  The reason search engines like blogs is because they provide fresh content, and they provide it often.  So when you don’t make it a priority having a blog doesn’t come close to the potential value it offers.  So when you’re going to start a blog make sure you’re committed to it so it can work for you the way it’s capable of.

Don’t worry, I’ll be back to purple widget business soon.

The good news is we’re # 1 on Yahoo for the search term purple widget!  The bad news of course (besides nobody really searches for purple widget) nobody uses Yahoo! anymore…

But, in about 9 days I’ve launched the website purplewidget.com, moved to Google ranking spot # 4 and # 1 on Yahoo.  Not bad and just getting started.

#1 on Yahoo for Purple Widget