SEO Efforts Pay Off!

Several months ago, I checked Lafayette Online’s rank in Google and almost cried. I had dropped from #3 or #4 (where I’d been pretty steadily for years) to #7.

Since then, I’ve been going over the code and reading everything I’ve been able to find on improving one’s site to be nicer to the bots and to increase keywords and relevancy, etc. All white hat, nothing underhanded or tricky — I focused on writing better descriptions for meta tags and alt tags, made sure all of the code passed validation, rewrote the page to eliminate as many tables as possible with CSS, and added in some new RSS feeds to encourage people to display news from Lafayette Online on their blogs.
I am VERY pleased to announce that Lafayette Online has not only moved up from #7, but it’s overtaken the Journal and Courier, the Convention of Visitors Bureau and even the Purdue University site for the #2 result for Lafayette Indiana on Google. The only site ahead of it now is the official city site… so they’re the new target. If I can overtake that site and be #1, I will be a very happy camper.

Google Results Page for keywords Lafayette and Indiana