update

My SEO War

Six weeks ago i started a business called Orrell Electrics in north Liverpool, i have been an electrician for a long time, i am pretty good at my job and i was sick of working for other people and making them lots of money so i decided to go solo. This is something i have been thinking about for a while and i have finally gone through with it as my last boss was constantly moaning and the company i worked at before that had me working in social housing projects which was 'challenging' - lets leave that one alone.

Anyway i believe the way forward especially in the current economic climate is the internet. Ok so i how do i get my website on the first page of google? Ha!! the million dollar question (literally)

In a bid to get my site to the top of the google rankings i have spent the last six weeks researching SEO (search engine optimisation) yes I also did not know what those three little letters meant six weeks ago!!

Anyway back on topic this has almost become an obsession of mine now which consists of me constantly tweaking my website www.orrellelectrics.co.uk on a daily basis, sitting at my computer till god knows what time in the morning (i really mean that), downloading multiple amounts of software, joining about 300 business forums, and constantly thinking about it 24 hours a day, you get the general idea!!

Also at the same time i have been mad busy trying to run a business which to be honest has been crazy to say the least, work has flooded in which is good, getting paid for that work is not so good but lets leave that topic to another day.

Anyway SEO - most people pay someone to carry this out and its usually quite expensive, me having start up costs of £8000 and not wanting to spend any more money if i can help it, I have taken it upon myself to try and do it on my own. Bad idea? maybe but one plus is if you google 'niceic electricians in liverpool' i am ranked number 10, number 4 on Bing. This is quite an achievement considering my website is only six weeks old but there is still lots of work to be done.

Most SEO experts speculate results in three to six months, so who knows how long it will take a novice like me? I know one thing all i can keep doing is researching methods to drive traffic to my site, the more links and people visiting my site will help but ultimately google is a monster that no one really understands i suspect - experts speculate about this and that, software such as seomoz tell you to do this and that but i think traffic is the main weapon in your arsenal and for traffic your keywords have to be perfect and that is something i have struggled with from day one.

They ask you to think like a 'user' - in other words i have to guess what someone will type when looking for an electrician in liverpool, me i assume it would be 'Electrician in Liverpool' well my site is not even ranked in the top 100 sites for that phrase, bummer! I should have jumped on this bandwagon about 10 years ago! You live and learn and all that shimazz. One good thing is some software lets me spy on my rivals and see what keywords they are using so i can get a general idea of what works.

Anyway i am going to leave it here for now, i have included some links to my website, facebook page and twitter account, i will continue this after more research is conducted on ways to improve my google ranking.

And yes i am using google analytics before anyone asks.

www.orrellelectrics.co.uk
https://twitter.com/#!/OrrellElectrics
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Orrell-Electrics/344667162264039