Progress... But Still a long way to go.

We reviewed web analysis records for May for this year and last year. We just started to learn about SEO in early 2003. We still can hardly program the H in HTML, but we run a business which has become more and more dependant on web traffic and we were fearing competiton.

We have spent the most time on driving our SERPs rankings high...essentially from being very hidden. We are a regional business and could be found with regional phrases but not as easily as we are now.

Here's the data.

Visitors to the site increased by 270%
Unique visitors to the site increased by 43%
Conversions increased by 21%
Google, Yahoo, and MSN traffic have all doubled.

Our most important keyword phrases are regional ones. Our conversions come from regional variations on our keywords. We are now #1 or close to #1 for all variations on regional keywords. We weren't before. Gross traffic from industry themed links into our site has dropped. I assume searchers that were looking for us before can more easily find us now. (We are pretty darn high for the major terms in our category: 6 in G, 1 in Y and 1 (this week) in MSN.)

We get lots more traffic from less connected keyword phrases that essentially don't turn into conversions. These phrases pop up because of our better PR and SERPs.

We have learned here how to keep tweaking the keyword phrases that are more important to qualified traffic and conversions and are spending most of our time now on that part of the process.

I can't tell you how much valuable stuff I've learned in these forums. (Besides that the threads are often amusing!!)

Anyways this is a constant learning process.

how are you all doing?

Dave