Did you notice?
December 30, 2008
Ok..for those who regularly read EricOnSearch…and thankfully that list is getting longer and longer, I have a question.
In the last two months I have changed TWO (count ‘em!-grin) separate and distinct pieces of this blog in order to test or get data on some common search engine optimization concepts. (or misconcepts?) I PURPOSELY did not announce what I was doing and I now can see the results!
SO, time to see who noticed! If you think you know what I tested and have an idea what the results were…fire a comment down below! If you are the first to name one of them, you get a free one hour consulation with me. If you are the first to name both, you get THREE free hours of my time!
Are you stumped? Here’s a hint! One of them is PLAINLY visible on the front page of EricOnSearch..to notice the other, you need to look at the other pages as well to see what I did!
Have a happy new year and a great 2009!
Eric
Pure guess here since I don’t normally read your blog (but will!)
1 Video.
2 Buy now buttons on SEO page?
Hey Terry! No, but those were great guesses. Yes, they are new (and I imagine a lot of people are wondering about video and SEO these days…). But that is not them!
Stay tuned. Someone should have the answers soon…
This is also something of a guess but you said test – so you moved the blogroll to the body and moved the latest posts to the sidebar. The main area is now featured posts/categories.
Realized I didn’t answer the question – testing to see if G treats sidebar any differently than the body of the site.
Carolyn has one of them!
What’s the second? It’s the one that requires you to notice all of the pages (hint, hint)
Congrats Carolyn!
What I did was move the blogroll from the sidebar to the main body. This theme is very amenable to me doing that code wise. I mentioned doing it over at realestatebloglab.com as well.
I sent the hint out on Twitter…for the second one…look up! (to the top)…
Best
Eric
Well, I knew about the blog roll, so I didn’t comment on that one. But since some time has passed and I don’t really know what the second one is. I’ll take a stab at it. You removed all your categories and left all your posts uncategorized?
I am curious to find out the results of the blogroll-in-the-body change… what were the results?
As far as the other – did you make the ‘header’ text vs and image? =0)
chris the implementer
This is a guess – but in your meta titles – did you take out Eric On Search? You just have the name of the post — Scott’s guess seems good as well.
Great guesses all!
Carolym wins the prize! In the past my title tags loojed like this:
/%postname%/ blog title
Since my postnames are often long and my blog title was Eric on Search: SouthernIndiana Search Engine Optimization and Marketing Blog, I often went over the 64 character LIMIT imposed my most SEOs.
It also did not look good to have a blog with all of that goop at the top…so why not change the titles to JUST the postname…and see the effects on my current posts which rank OK for terms like:
Generatus
Acne Clearing Device
Rancho Carlsbad etc…(in this case I added a 1 to the end of the title to see if any increase was due to an exact match or just shortening the title.
Was the text perfect? No.
Did it point out some good practices for bloggers? Uh-huh.
To those reading this comment: Writing solid titles is a good idea (duh). Do you HAVE to keep them below 64? No. Is it a good practice. Sure.
I am writing up this up in detail (among other the other things that I tested) in my email newsletter to clients going out today. If you are a client, you’ll get one. If you work with me at the real estate office, you will as well. If you commented above, likewise!
As always, keep in mine that one guy testing stuff on one site means that that the evidence is anecdotal. Correlation does NOT equal causation!
Like my friend who researches kids with autism says “If you know one kid with autism…then you know one kid with autism.” Websites and SEO are very similar.
Carolyn! Nicely done! Hit me up for the 3 hours sometime!
By the way…in marketing on the web…aside from building relationships (most important skill IMO), one of the next most important things is a keen sense of people’s websites, what they change and what the corresponding effects are.
While you certainly cannot say “they ONLY did this and got that” because nothing is truly static…it can often give you an idea of which way the wind is blowing and can often aid you in building relationships with them…
To a webmaster “Hey, I noticed you changed xyz on your site. Nice going!” is almost as good as noticing when a lady gets her hair done and you pay her a compliment…no? (grin)
Cool – you did give a big hint when you said look up. Was trying to figure out if it was something in the blog header but the title tags made more sense. The best thing I learned this year was from you — the power of relationships.
When you made the “Big change” – that’s when i noticed everything (pretty early too;) – The “hair” analogy made me smile
I see your video getting embedded in a couple places too, hope you have more on the way. Scott is also posting video (and some of his friends as well).
Hey Knox!
yeah…will be doing more videos soon (they are faster than writing all of that stuff!), but that one was fun because it’s the basics.
. Gotta get the foundation set up right. Hope things are going well for you in Denver!
best
Eric