SEO Case Study – Search Engine Breakdown

December 1, 2009 by RJ Sherman
Filed under: All, Brand-Yourself.com, How To, SEO, Skills, Web Identity, blogging, reputation management, social media 
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Dan schawbel personal branding blog

I have been talking for the past few weeks about how to get your name to the top of Google and how to seo your site to help you be found.

Instead of spending this week with another week giving our readers another step by step guide I want to show you an example an SEO’d site to point out some good and not so good.

Let’s start with our friend Dan Schawbel, he runs the Personal Branding Blog. Now, if you have taken the time to look at his site you will notice that on the home page he uses the words “Personal Branding” 22 times in visible text and a total of 125 times in Reference tags.  And no, for those of you wondering I did not count, I used this really good tool to check the keyword density of the page: http://www.keyworddensity.com/

What does this mean?  It means that if you were to read his site you would see the words “Personal Branding” 22 times and that he has optimized all of his backend content for that keyword phrase as well.  This is the reason that he comes up number 1 for the phrase and that his personal site comes up number two.

So why else does he come up so highly?  There are a couple of really important factors that should be noted.  First off, according to website grader (which scores him as a 99.5) he has over 11,000 inbound links.  This means that in Google’s eyes he has 11,000 votes towards his site being credible.  Always remember that inbound links are one of the most important factors for search engines to determine how reputable a site is.

Some of the other big things that Dan has working in his favor are:

  • Publishes content on a daily basis – Search engines want to see content that is fresh, that doesn’t mean rewrite your home page every day but that does mean that you should be adding pages/posts regularly.
  • Dan has good content – it is not that he is publishing the same old stuff every day; he is taking the time to put together good articles that are always focused on personal branding.  Search engines want good content for their readers.

What could Dan do better?

  • Extend how long he owns the domain name- Currently (according to website grader) the domain name is only registered for another year.  Search engines want to make sure that the domain name is not new so it is good that he has owned it for almost 3 years, but they also want to see that you plan to use it moving forwards
  • Leverage Digg – make sure that all of his articles are automatically submitted to Digg so that users are more apt to click on them and it makes it easier for a passive user to Digg his articles.  Social networks are playing a larger part in today’s SEO world.  Dan does effectively get his content out to many of these networks, but it is important to not let any of them slide.
  • I would look to see if there is a way to do a 301/302 redirect of his old blog that he used to run through wordpress- Or at least i would start going through that site and creating links on the word personal branding to his current site.  He has not been able to overcome it at the top of Google and a linking strategy could help take away some of the Page Rank from his old site.

moved

Dan’s site is a great example of how to do site wide search engine optimization.  He has done it very well there is no doubt there.  It is a complex process that enables you to go for higher traffic words than you can sometimes achieve with only writing a series of articles about one topic.  Also keep in mind, larger sites such as CNN and the NYTimes can more easily get harder keywords due to their higher page rank.

Next week I am going to focus my efforts on giving you insight into another important case study, a look at a single page SEO strategy and pointing out the pros and cons.  Thanks and I look forward to your questions / comments!

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Comments

  • Great Tips.. Now I need to extend my domain and add more H1 and reg keywords on my home page.
  • I would be careful using H1 tags in your actual post as your title is an H1 tag. For any lists or points that you make, I would recommend using H2/H3 tags, bolding, italics or underlining which still hold weight for SEO.

    Keywords though as you already know are the best if you can figure out exactly what people search for. It is hard but will pay off in the end.
  • Glenda
    I have included a link to another article that provides really interesting insight into building your personal brand.

    http://www.psycray.com/tips-for-building-person...

    Enjoy!
  • Thanks for the link, you had some really good content to help anyone with their personal brand online. It is all about being proactive and connect with others while producing content. It sounds overwhelming but is fun and only gets easier!
  • keyword research for your content is a complex process but it really does pay of in the long run, with consistent adding of quality and helpful content theres no doubt your blog would get the first page ranking. by the way thanks for the helpful post.
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