Matt Hanson

Yes, I think we agree that the old site had some good links, but there were real problems with it getting the maximum value out of those good links.

So Google did not like the old site, and she fixed it, probably with standard SEO improvements as well as fixing the internal site linking structure, and more and better content.

And yes, you would need to compare it with the old site to see the changes.

And for that matter, if you really want to spend the time and investigate this phenomenon, you could compare it to the other sites further down the rankings for [Oakland DUI lawyer]. Everything is relative!

I agree Google thinks the site is well optimized for [oakland dui lawyer]. I agree it likely has to do with in-bound links. However, those in-bound links existed before and after the optimization work.

It seems that the site should have ranked for [oakland dui lawyer] prior to the optimization project but that there was something blocking it. If this is true, than Araceli removed the blockage rather than adding something in.

If the optimization is more a matter of taking something away than adding something in, that means we can’t see the important changes in the current site.

I would guess that the old site was probably not so much badly optimized, as it was built with no search engine considerations whatsoever. So, fixing a terrible internal navigation structure, and adding some decent title tags, and a bunch more targeted content can work wonders.

But again, I’m not sure what your point is. You don’t see how the site is well optimized for [oakland dui lawyer], yet google disagrees. And then you admit that you don’t know much about SEO.

All that means is that Araceli knows much more about it than you!

From the law.com article and the comment sin this blog it sounds like she added content, changed site structure, and adjusted on-page factors. It makes it sound like external links were constant before and after the seo project, yet the ranking jumped.

I am starting to think that the major thing the was done was not the inclusion of new optimization but the removal of some really bad attempts at optimization. For example, I have seen rankings jumps like this for the removal of keywords stuffed in invisible text.

I do not want to disparage the work of Araceli Parra – obviously the proof is in the pudding. I just don’t get it. Based on the little I know of SEO, the site doesn’t seem optimized for [oakland dui lawyer] at all.

The classic SEO example that explains the value of off page links is “click here”. The #1 ranked site for the search term “click here” is the Adobe Acrobat download page, because millions of web pages have a link that says “to download acrobat, click here“. Click here appears no where on the page or in the title, and it just doesn’t need to with that kind of off-page, incoming link power.