SEO Search Engine Ranking Blog

My last January 2004 post:

Previosly, the keyword “ESL” was mentioned once in my ESL site’s title and heading. I recently changed the title so that it’s now mentioned 3 times: ESL go - free English as a second language: learning ESL + teaching ESL.

What kind of affect has this had? Not as significant an effect as I would have hoped. I seem to have moved up about 15 spots, from the mid-nineties to #80. Google has also registerd about 40 new links to my site (though my page rank is still 6) so link popularity may have also fueled the increase.

It’s not too different 4+ years later: “ESL - English as a second language learning & teaching ESL”

I haven’t looked at the title in years so it’s probably time to reevaluate. The site is #5 for ‘teaching ESL’ and I bet that if I remove that from the title I will lose a few spots. I like the learning, because I need people to know that the site is for both teachers and students when they see it listed in the serps. I may not change the title at all.

Anyway, SEO tip for choosing a title. Make it keywords or phrases you want to and can rank for. Also make sure it gives people a reason to click on your site when they do find it in the SERPs.

According to the way back machine, this was my first ever post:

Domain names and SEO

According to the web archive, Lycos does consider domain names when determining search results (so other search engines may too) and if you want to make sure that words are separated, use a hyphen. That tells me that for my ESL web site (the archived version), I should have all links pointing to www.esl-go.com and own www.eslgo.com (point it to www.esl-go.com) since it’s the one people will remember and type into their browsers.

The Lycos guy points out that it’s a small factor, but every little bit helps, no? Anyway, it’s too late for ESLgo.com, but www.seo-search-engine-ranking.com is a name that tries to take advantage of this. Of course if you like my site you’d better add it to your favorites; www.seo-search-engine-ranking.com may be tough to remember…

Seems like common knowledge now, but back on January 16, 2004 it was fairly new to me. It’s whay I registered this name,  a list of keywords I thought I might rank for one day. Little did I know how fierce the competition would become for SEO related keywords…