Optimising for a Specific Key Phrase

Recently I decided I would target the phrase Freelance SEO Consultant.

These are the changes I made to the site to make it perform and I’ll update the post covering what happens and when.

Optimise the page

I already had a page called Freelance SEO specialist so I thought rather from starting from scratch I would amend this page – it’s worth noting this page didn’t rank in the top 500 for the phrase.

I amended the title tag so the key Phrase appeared first, I then amended the H1 tag to include the phrase and the H2 tags to include variations of the phrase, I also used the strong and italics tag for added emphasis of the prhase.

I then waited. A week later I was at position 55.

Freelance SEO Consultant Links

So I was at position 55, if I’d used the homepage no doubt I’d have been at position 35 or maybe better, however I didn’t want to change my core optimisation which already drives traffic to the site, that does leave me with a problem because the majority of the competitors are using their homepage title tag to get ranked, and them all being SEO’s themselves there’s a good chance they’ll be optimising the page as well as I will be, so the next job is building links.

I built one sitewide link – it’s in the footer, I had considered putting this sitewide link in the main navigation however this is inappropriate at the moment, so the weaker footer link will have to do.

A week or so after the footer link went in I got a boost, the site started to display at position 36.

I’ve built some links from some of the people I’ve been working with to get a bit more of a boost. Now I’m at position 30.

Next job is some article marketing based around the phrase freelance SEO consultant with links linking back to the page.

Update

I carried out some article marketing for the phrase freelance SEO consultant which drove the page up to the position of 13 over the course of a week or so the phrase teatered from 13 – 11 but it wouldn’t tip over the page, I have now carried out link building commenting on related blogs that allow followed links – as from this morning (5th July 2010) I am now at position 9 for the term Freelance SEO Consultant in Google UK.

I will be carrying out more link building to get this site to move higher in the coming weeks.