SEO

While reading the last issue of The Showbox I ran across one of the new EDJE ads about search engines.  It said “Search engines got you down?  We’ll get you to the top”.  GREAT, somebody is offering SEO services, something I know quite a few people could use.

Last Monday I e-mailed them directly to ask what kind of SEO services they provide and never got a response so I figured I’d do a little research on how well their own site ranks in the search engines.

----WARNING – TECH NECK TALK – SKIP IF YOU DON’T WANT TO READ----

I picked half a dozen terms related to what EDJE does that also get at least 10 searches based on Wordtracker data.  The terms selected and their relative search volume were…

• “cattle for sale” – 56
• “beef cattle” – 44
• “club calves” – 35
• “show steers” – 34
• “beef cattle for sale” – 20
• “show cattle” – 17

I left out the term “cattle” because it has a search volume in the 600 range and would make the rest of the calculation meaningless (EDJE doesn't rank for "cattle" any way).  I also left out terms below 10 searches in the Wordtracker database.

I then went to Google, Yahoo, and MSN to see what sites rank in the top ten for each of the six terms listed above.  That data was used to give each site that ranked a score.  The recent Comscore data was used to assign a weight for each engine (.629 Google, .202 Yahoo, .085 MSN) and the rankings were weighted based on CTR for search engine results calculated by Cornell University.

I didn’t include any educational or government sites and counted all of the EDJE network sites into the same total (it actually gave them an advantage).

----END OF TECH TALK----

Here are the results…

1. Cattle Today – 20.67
2. Showsteers.com – 20.19
3. Clubcalves.com – 14.88
4. Showcattle.com – 10.02
5. Cattlerange.com – 7.06
6. EDJE Network of Sites – 4.38
7. Texasshowcattle.com – 3.78
8. Steerplanet.com – 1.09
9. Cattle Mail USA – .89
10. Oklahomashowsteer.com - .88 

Take those results for what they’re worth but there’s only one of those sites advertising their ability to “get you to the top” and it’s not in the top five.  Cattle Today would be higher if the scope weren't kept to show cattle but if I did widen the scope of it, sites such as Cattlepages.com and Cattle.com would be in the top five as well.

I don't recall any more than 1-2 ranches that I've ever looked up that didn't rank in the top five spots on Google for any search for their ranch name or owner name and city and that's what you really need to rank for.  The generic terms such as those listed above are where the big boys play and it's most certainly not something to farm out to a company that doesn't even use a robots.txt file or proper 301 redirection.

I have used and always recommend PPC programs such as Adwords for marketing cattle via search engines.  I'll do a post with tips on how to use those types of programs sometime in the next week.