How quickly do you rank well?

[Natkits]

I've had my ecommerce site up and running for 12 months and am trying to judge how well I've done in terms of ranking, hits etc.

I rank Top10 for all longer search terms, Top20 for all 2 word terms and now in the Top30 for my much sought after single keyword term, kitchens

For hits, as with keywords, we're increasing all the time with January being our busiest month ever; though February looks like it's going to beat it.

Anyhoo, Jan stats follow:

Total Visitors: 15345 (avg 495 p/day)
Total Unique IP's: 5278 (avg 173 p/day)
Total Page Views: 66903 (avg 2158 p/day)
Total Hits: 617379 (avg 19915 p/day)

Now I'm sure some of you will have achieved much better results than this, I'm merely curious to see how good/badly we've done without any professional help with SEO.

Feedback, suggestions, your own stats and thoughts, all welcome

[Brian Turner]

I think warming up a site in search engines is absolutely key before really expecting to push on your rankings.

The big concern I have with your site is the URLs - they are awful. I'll bet you could increase your traffic by a minimum of 10% if you rewrote the URLs to simple keyword URLs and redirect the older URLs to the newer ones.

I've got to admit, I see much better possibilities in SEO terms if the site were rebuilt in PHP/MySQL - IMO it's much harder to work with ASP - so many more options are available in PHP/MySQL.

But...that aside, a URL rewrite is recommended and then after another 3-4 months, I'd say the site would be ripe for a good mid-level link development campaign.

2c.

[Natkits]

Thanks for your response Brian.

That URL we-write is long overdue indeed, i'll get cracking on that shortly.

Regarding a whole site re-write in php/mysql, what are the benefits? You mention 'much more options' and 'better seo possibilites' with php/mysql... what would these be?

ps: you didnt comment on my stats, does that mean theyre that bad?!

[SeeMe]

How long does it normally take for a site to "warm up"? I just wonder how long would be a valid expectation.

[Natkits]

If the jump in my SERPS recently is anything to go by, I'd say 12 months.

This is my first website though, and all the SEO I've done is from info I've picked up off the net. I'm sure people who actually know what they're doing could demonstrate a far shorter warming up period.

[Brian Turner]

I didn't comment on your stats because it's conversion figures that really matter, at the end of the day. You could have 1000 visitors per day and convert 5, or 100 visitors per day and convert 10.

As for possibilities on php/mysql - I'm thinking especially in terms of expanding content. For example, if I were running a household sales site, I'd want to consider adding a forum, blog, and news section. All these have php/mysql platforms that have real search friendliness built into them. Everything I've seen on asp in these areas has been pretty poor. So I tend to much prefer php/mysql as a development platform in general for that reason.

[Natkits]

Conversion figures are king, no doubt. I'm just trying to get an idea on how I'm doing SEOwise... so given the fact that I'm a year in, do the figures look ok, poo, brilliant?

[Solicitors Mortgages]

those stats look OK to me, nice looking site.

where is your traffic coming from...google?

Top 20 and top 30 are pretty useless normally. Most surfers don't go past page 1, of course all your hits could be from your competition so it will depend if you are making sales or not.

James.

[bermuda]

I think something whcih can even be more important than achieving high ranking and top 10 placement, is the ability and factors that can help in fixing a position.

Many websites experience jumps and decrease in positions for a number of reasons, so I think, it is better to be for example number 7 on Google and stay there for a year, than being number 3 for three months and then not being found among the top 10 for the rest of the year.

[Natkits]

Originally Posted by Solicitors Mortgages

those stats look OK to me, nice looking site.

where is your traffic coming from...google?

Top 20 and top 30 are pretty useless normally. Most surfers don't go past page 1, of course all your hits could be from your competition so it will depend if you are making sales or not.

James.

Hi James and thanks for your comments.

The majority of our traffic does indeed come from google.

I take your point that Top20, 30 etc are generally not much use. The difference with our product is that the majority of clients will search quote deep looking for companies like us so we do get hits and conversions from lower ranked keywords. Thankfully that means theyre not all competitors hits