Success Stories

[coder]

On this forum i've read lots of advice on what people should and should not do. Having said that I was curious to hear of success stories from people who have used the advice from this forum. Or to hear from the people who used the advice to get negative results.

Also how long it took to get the results. I've noticed a lot of newbies who expect instant results and they expect to be #1 in search engines with their brand new site. Has that actually ever happened?

[janeth]

I started my site www.geeksonsteroids.com about the same time this forum started. We started with no money and not a clue about what we where doing.

We now rank in the top for more key words then I can count. Some of them very competitive like website design which we have just dropped this month to page four but was on page two for almost 6 months. We rank #1 for key words like custom website design and many many more.

We have just started a new site www.ranked1.net currently have 15 people that work here and make a good living. I owe that success to this forum and other forums like it.

But as in anything there is good and bad advice. You have to be careful whose advice your taking. I have herd really, really bad advice as well.

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[Duncan Pollock]

I'm certainly prepared to say that I owe a lot to WPW and the advice that its gurus keep handing out and share with us so selflessly. It isn't one thing, though. It's several ideas/suggestions and an ongoing message that I think can be summarized as follows.
1. Content is a major reason for getting yourself well placed in the Search Engines. The more there is of it, the more focused it is, and the more it's written for the visitor rather than the search engines, the greater your chance of overtaking your competitors. In effect, a thousand words can be better than a single picture!
2. The proper choice and wording of meta tags, especially Title, Description, and Keywords, does make a difference, whether Google takes any notice of them or not. H1 headings, use of alt tags, limited reliance on frames and java, and similar SEO "mechanisms" also help. A lot of little things add up to a whole heap of difference!
3. Comparison with competitive sites and an open minded examination of them, particularly if they have better positions than you do, makes a great deal of sense. It's also far more helpful to you than giving vent about the unfairness of it all. If Google thinks you aren't as good as you think you are, try to fathom out the reasons and change what you're doing accordingly. Don't fight 'em, join 'em!
4. Allow for and recognize that there are differences of opinion in the posts here, and most of them are healthy. But look for the "common denominators." Don't rely on a single opinion, settle for the consensus.

And let me say that I didn't know, let alone understand, one word of all this when I first became a participant in WPW a year ago. I appeared here and there alongside (and often enough lower down than) a good half dozen local competitors, but there's no doubt that I now stand head and shoulders above them. Admittedly, some of it is the result of the Florida Dance that took a very jaundiced approach to real estate sites (not without some justification perhaps), but I'm throughly convinced that, thanks to what I learned from WPW, I did more than escape Google's wrath. I seem to have been pointed by the posts here in all the right directions.
Success doesn't come overnight, but the rudiments of it are certainly contained in these various and lively threads of ours.

Duncan

[mantawebsolutions]

i have only started using the advice from WPW gurus for the last month or so and have picked up alot of valuable information in this short time. In fact, i have been visiting the forums on a daily basis now for the last 2 weeks.

What's great about WPW is that i share the little information that i know, but learn in the process as i go along by asking questions and finding good advice.

This is not a "i-know-it-all-u-can't-teach-me-anything" forum, everyone learns. My sincere apologies to those who do/does know it all... :)

[jacobwissler]

Yes, a person can get almost instant results, if they have a very uncompetitive search term. This resulted in me thinking that I knew more than I did. I optimized a few sites and they quickly became #1. Only later did I understand that my fast "success" came only because there was little competition for those phrases.

[coder]

I realized I didn't mention our own success. I started in graphics, then programming, and eventually SEO. However I didn't come to WPW til a couple months ago, and would of saved myself a lot of headaches if I had come here a lot sooner.

After coming here I healized a lot of people were recommending what we were already doing except we did it all by trial and error. Talk about the wrong way of doing things, we would make changes to a couple of our sites and wait weeks/months to see if it made a difference. If the change was a good change then we would implement that to all our sites. Not very pretty but it worked.

After reading through a lot of posts here I found ways of polishing our sites even more. And been able to help newbies avoid alot of mistakes most of us have been through.

[coder]

jacob, it's almost funny you mention that you got great results from uncompetive terms.
We get SEO companies sending us stuff a couple times a month telling us how they made all these companies #1 in search engines. And they brag about three, four and sometimes even five words in the search term. They also guarantee these same great results for us. Apparently no one told them that the fewer the words in the search term the better.

Who really cares about being #1 for "Snow removal in Southern Florida"? By the way in google http://nsidc.org/snow/facts.html is #1 for snow removal in Southern Florida

[rlrouse]

I learned most of what I know by reading forums (including this one) and doing my own testing. Trial and error is a great teacher.

[cbp]

Trial and error is a great teacher.

I recall some research that showed that the main difference between a succesful person and a "failed" person, was that the succssful person had 3.7 (or some number like that) times as many failures.

The only prblem with trial and error being a great teacher is that too many people don't learn by their mistakes.

CBP

[rlrouse]

The only prblem with trial and error being a great teacher is that too many people don't learn by their mistakes.

Very true, but all of the trial and error doesn't have to be on your part. That's why forums like this one are so useful.

What I try to do is peek "behind the scenes" when reading forum posts. If I see a new concept (new to me) being discussed, I try to verify what is being said.

If I can't verify that a stated position is accurate by looking at the available evidence, I'll do my own tests and eventually post the results here and elsewhere in some form, often in a syndicated article (great for obtaining backlinks).

[rescom]

I have had GREAT success with the advise I have recieved here.

I do SOME design work, but for the most part, I manage two sites on-going. With the advise that I have learned here I have both of them in top positions for their keywords and sales from both sites are doing great.

One site was redesigned and optimized in April...It now holds a 2 nd page spot on Google, #1 spots in Yahoo, MSN & AOL.

The second site holds # 1 spots in Google, Yahoo, MSN & AOL for MANY keywords. (2 year old site)

Both sites see increased traffic and sales each month.

The information you recieve here is invaluable!

Trial and Error is a great teacher...But it is even better when you can benefit from others errors too!

[coder]

I'd have to agree with rescom, "Trial and Error is a great teacher" but all the time and headaches I could of saved myself from.

Of course I like to figure out a lot of stuff my own, it's more self gratifying.