Primal Space Historic SEO Experimentation Notes
Here at Primal Space, one of the many digital web services we offer our clients is SEO work. So carrying search engine optimisation for their website using a variety of techniques. What is SEO or search engine optimisation we hear you ask? It’s a term banded about a lot when people talk about websites. It’s an incredibly important term to be aware of and understand if you have a website of your own.
Regardless of what that website does, whether it be built for e-commerce or for some other purpose. We wrote a blog post a number of months back on our website that gives a very brief outline of this much talked about the concept. So to get a bit of an understanding of this term SEO, you can read about its definition and background here – Concept of SEO written by Primal Space. We offer some of the most competitive rates in Scotland for our SEO services. Prices we quote will vary on the keyword or phrase you are looking to improve your organic presence for online. If you would like to receive a quote from us. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch and we’ll be happy to advise you of an approximate cost.
While SEO web services Edinburgh is the title of this blog article. This post talks more about our own results and findings with SEO work done for our own website. Which targets keyword phrases relating to Edinburgh, where our target market of clients is. All of the keyword phrases are related to the services we offer. We’re essentially sharing our own research and findings here. Mainly to show how quickly keywords can increase in their ranking position in search engines online.
The proof is in the pudding they say. So we wanted to share some keyword results for our own Primal Space website that we have been working on for some time. And have recently started to index in search engines. So for the purpose of this example, we’ll use the world’s most popular search engine Google to display our results. You may have found our very website here by searching for 1 of these phrases or a similar variation of the keyword phrase in a Google search.
So we’ve picked 13 keyword phrases that we have been working on in recent months. We’ve also added in our own company name, Primal Space, into the results as well to show where it displays. This has been done as more of an experiment than anything. And will be used to display some factors to consider when thinking about what terms you want your website and it’s paging to index for. Read our separate post about the benefits of local SEO for your organisation.
Below we’ve listed the keyword or phrase that we have been doing SEO work on to index as high as possible for, and the page of Google that the keyword phrase is on of Google next to it. Then to the right of that, the position on that page that the phrase is sitting in the organic search results of the search engine. We aren’t including paid online advertising such as CPC (cost per click) or PPC (pay per click) listings from Google Adwords services, for these results that we are detailing here. We should highlight that with the in depth complicated algorithms that Google possesses to create it’s search results, depending on a number of factors, the results you find of your own in Google search for our keyword terms listed below may vary slightly.
For example, if you are searching on a mobile or tablet device, the organic ranking results in Google will vary from that of a desktop browser. The reason for this one single algorithm factor is that our entire website is designed and termed as mobile friendly, so if viewing on a mobile device, you’ll see this wording next to our website listing before clicking on it. The results of the organic rankings will undoubtedly change in the future and could move up as well as down for any of the keyword phrases. So our findings at the time of writing this blog post on Friday the 18th of December 2015 are below:
Content Writing Edinburgh – Page 1 – Position 9
Responsive Web Design Edinburgh – Page 1 – Position 1
Graphic Design Edinburgh – Page 14 – Position 6
Website Hosting Edinburgh – Page 1 – Position 10
Online Marketing Edinburgh – Page 6 – Position 4
Website Maintenance Edinburgh – Page 1 – Position 8
E-commerce Websites Edinburgh – Page 2 – Position 5
Server Management Edinburgh – Page 1 – Position 3
Responsive Website Design Edinburgh – Page 5 – Position 4
Online Branding Edinburgh – Page 1 – Position 2
E-commerce Web Design Edinburgh – Page 3 – Position 10
Web Design Edinburgh – Page 12 – Position 7
Magento Edinburgh – Page 3 – Position 3
Primal Space – Page 1 – Position 2 (but it does vary frequently between position 2 and 3 of page 1)
Findings/Learnings
There is a lot of interesting findings and learning that can be taken from the above results. So for example, the large difference in the indexing of the terms “responsive web design Edinburgh” and “responsive website design Edinburgh” is quite staggering. So the only difference between the 2 phrases being the word web or website. Both are indexing and directing to the same URL page. Some of the above phrases are remarkably more competitive and harder to index for than others in Google.
For example, “online marketing Edinburgh” is much more competitive than say “website maintenance Edinburgh” is. Also some of the terms we have been working on more aggressively than others. So “graphic design Edinburgh” is 1 we have done little work on, and the results of this show. It is also quite a competitive phrase to try to index on page 1 of Google for. Phrases like “responsive web design Edinburgh” is a keyword phrase we have worked on a great deal more, as it is 1 of the core features we offer all clients within any web design package we deliver. Throughout the process, we have been performing a large amount of website speed optimisation on the site. Which is likely factored into the positive results. We created a post to help users understand how they can improve website speed with some great suggestions.
We also found it interesting that if you change the spelling of the word “E-commerce” in your search you are doing, the results that come up change heavily too! So we’ve learned here from this 1 simple search change, that 1 of the many algorithms that Google has written is related to the spelling of a word. Technically this word in question can be typed as “e-commerce” or “Ecommerce” and you will see different companies typing it in different ways, which will have an adverse effect on their results. Personally, we are of the opinion that it should be typed as e-commerce, as the word stands for electronic commerce, so there needs to be a hyphen there to separate and signify this. Though we are but humble web designers, and not really masters of the English language, so we’ll just leave it that this is only our opinion on this one word’s spelling.
You’ll also notice that with the exception of the search term “Primal Space”, which indexes our home page in it’s search result, all of the other keyword phrases index to a specific page on our website that is most relevant to that keyword phrase, rather than indexing to our home page itself. This is exactly what you will always want to occur for your own SEO work too. You don’t want the user to land on your home page for a particular search term, and then have to navigate through your website to find the relevant page that they really want. You want the user to land onto that page straight away from their Google search. You really only want your home page to index for a small number of keyword phrases such as your company name for example, or a variant of it.
So for example if you are a carpenter in Edinburgh, and you make kitchen cabinets, and your company is called John Smith Carpentry. You want your home page to index for the search term “John Smith Carpentry” or any variant of this. You would then have written and dedicated a page all about the kitchen cabinets you produce. So the user will ideally land on this page you have created that talks all about this subject, and not landing on your homepage.
As much as we would love to index at the top of page 1 on Google for all of the above keyword phrases without the word Edinburgh tagged on the back, it’s simply not possible to do for a website like ours that was only launched in August 2015, so just over 4 months before this blog post was written! Maybe we will one day in the future index for the shorter variants of these phrases without the term Edinburgh within them.
But even with all of the right SEO techniques, hard work and willpower in the world, you simply couldn’t get any of the above keyword phrases to the top of the search engines that quickly. The phrases in question like “web design” or “online branding” are too short tail and much too competitive. Focusing on long tail keywords is always a better strategy initially for a new website just starting out with SEO. Then once you are established for the long tail keyword you have been doing your SEO techniques on, you can start to work on shorter variations of it too.
We will check back on this blog post in a few months time and see if any of the results have changed at all. We may also repeat this experiment for 1 of our clients with their permission to do so, with the purpose of the report being to show the before and after effects of the SEO work that we do. We are always happy to share our techniques with our paying clients, but can’t really do so on our websites blog posts. If you want to learn more about our SEO Edinburgh services please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us to find out about some of the techniques that we use to achieve positive indexing results for our clients.
The best way to share your web problem that you have with us is through the contact us page of our website. Somebody will come back to you shortly after you’ve given us the details of the project you want us to look at for you. Please remember to give us as much information as possible in your initial enquiry to us. We offer a number of web based digital services over and above just doing web design and SEO for our clients. Please peruse our website for a full list of them all within the services page.
Organic Rankings Update February 2016
We’re updating this post today 2 months on from initially writing it. For the purpose of seeing how ranking changes have taken place. And trying to establish why the keyword phrases have moved position’s in Google. Obviously, we should highlight again that there is always an element of guesswork involved in these findings and research. But some credit can be taken by techniques used in recent months to influence the movement of the keywords or keyword phrases. If you would like to find out more about the techniques we have used to achieve these mostly positive ranking increase results. Please don’t hesitate to contact us to find out more about our SEO services in Edinburgh that we offer our clients.
So below are the organic ranking positions for the keyword phrases we looked at 3 months ago.
Content Writing Edinburgh – Page 1 – Position 4 (Increase of 5 positions)
Responsive Web Design Edinburgh – Page 1 – Position 10 (Decrease of 9 positions) *
Graphic Design Edinburgh – Page 7 – Position 10 (Increase of 66 positions)
Website Hosting Edinburgh – Page 1 – Position 10 (Same position, no movement)
Online Marketing Edinburgh – Page 4 – Position 8 (Increase of 16 positions)
Website Maintenance Edinburgh – Page 1 – Position 6 (Increase of 2 positions)
E-commerce Websites Edinburgh – Page 1 – Position 5 (Increase of 10 positions)
Server Management Edinburgh – Page 1 – Position 1 (Increase of 2 positions)
Responsive Website Design Edinburgh – Page 2 – Position 2 (Increase of 32 positions)
Online Branding Edinburgh – Page 1 – Position 1 (Increase of 1 position) Also occupying position 2 on page 1 of Google too!
E-commerce Web Design Edinburgh – Page 1 – Position 4 (Increase of 26 positions)
Web Design Edinburgh – Nowhere to be found. **
Magento Edinburgh – Page 1 – Position 6 (Increase of 17 positions)
Primal Space – Page 1 – Position 2 (Same position, no movement)
Adding the below 5 keyword phrases for further research:
Website Design Edinburgh – Page 6 – Position 3
SEO Edinburgh – Page 3 – Position 2
Magento Agency Edinburgh – Page 3 – Position 10
SEO Services Edinburgh – Page 2 – Position 8
Web Design Edinburgh Prices – Page 2 – Position 8 (Also indexing on position 9 of page 2 as well)
* Analysing why “Responsive Web Design Edinburgh” has dropped 9 places. Initial thinking is the results on the day we original checked the position. Would have likely been a false position. The position the keyword phrase is in now is more of a natural position.
** Reasoning for the keyword phrase “Web Design Edinburgh” not being found at all in the first 20 pages of Google is unclear. The likely cause is that our page is in the middle of a “Google dance” and will settle again on a new page within the next few hours/days. Although the reading of recent articles online suggest that this term and Google algorithm technique is outdated and no longer used. Definition of the term Google Dance is the following – “In search engine optimisation (SEO), Google Dance is an out-dated slang term used to describe the period of time in which Google used to rebuild its rankings, and as a result of this rebuilding, rankings of Web sites on Google’s SERP may fluctuate in order during a several day period.” For our search term we are researching; “Web Design Edinburgh”, we know it was moving between pages 4 and as low as position 9 in recent days up to this update post. So it will likely revert back somewhere there shortly.
So the results we’ve experienced in the past 2 months, have been largely positive. All of the keyword phrases have improved with the exception of “Responsive Web Design Edinburgh”. And also with the exception of “Web Design Edinburgh” which has disappeared off the face of the earth. It will likely float back up again in the not too distant future. Again, we’ll update this post in a few months time to track any further movements. Trying to comment on why we think the keywords have made the movements up or down in the organic search results.
Organic Rankings Update May 2016
We had hoped to update this post every 2 months. But we have been very busy working on client’s website designs. As well as performing SEO work for a number of clients too. So diving straight into our update then. Just looking at firstly the 5 additional keyword phrases we added in February 2016 below:
Website Design Edinburgh – Page 2 – Position 7 (Increase of 36 positions)
SEO Edinburgh – Page 1 – Position 9 (Increase of 13 positions)
Magento Agency Edinburgh – Page 1 – Position 1 (Increase of 29 positions)
SEO Services Edinburgh – Page 1 – Position 9 (Increase of 9 positions)
Web Design Edinburgh Prices – Page 1 – Position 4 (Increase of 14 positions)
So you can see clearly vast improvements on all of these phrases for their results in organic Google search. Which is very positive indeed. A lot of the success has been down to on-site optimisation. Rather than off-site optimisation. Improvements made to each page of our own Primal Space website here. As well as general small improvements to the site as a whole. Will be contributing factors to these ranking improvements.
Other noteworthy improvements include the fact that the search phrase “Primal Space” our company name. Is now consistently on position 1 on page 1 of Google linking to our homepage. As well as this, we now occupy position 2 of page 1 of Google for this same search term. Linking to another page of our website, which talks about our mobile web design services.
What is also worth mentioning, is the vast improvements to the search term “web design Edinburgh”. You’ll notice that in our February 2016 update. This term had completely disappeared from the first 10 pages of organic Google search. You could argue it was doing a bit of a “Google dance”. But many believe that this concept no longer exists. But the question has to be asked if it wasn’t “dancing”, then where did the result index go? Other similar search terms were showing high up in Google search results. So it is likely that the page was moving around from results of the Google algorithms working their magic.
Anyway, the point being that the term and the page we want this term to index for, are now indexing higher than ever! Currently, as we update this article today, the search term “web design Edinburgh” is on position 5 of page 2 of Google organic search. Which is really positive considering how competitive this search phrase is. All of the other search terms we listed previously in this article have either held their position or improved slightly too. So not really worth listing these all again we feel. We’ll try to update this post again in approximately 2 months to detail any more changes. And look to analyse why these changes may have occurred.