Well, it took less time than I thought, but achieved my #1 to do for the year. I ranked 7th in Google for "Pittsburgh designer". I wanted to get ranked on the first page and it’s just above the fold on most screens, so I say it’s a success. Those were the two keywords I chose to rank for. My next test will be to choose a few more keywords try to rank for those while keeping my current rankings.

There were a few things I learned along the way. While updated my website, new design and optimization, I made a mistake. Not wanting to loose the rank I earned from my old site, I wanted to create an .htaccess file that would redirect all of the old incoming links to the new homepage. Not having success with the GoDaddy hosting, I gave up and deleted all of the pages. Well, that was a big mistake. Not only did I not rank for "Pittsburgh designer", but I didn’t rank for my name. NO RANK! I also realized that forgot to make my site public within my CMS.

The good news was that it was my site, not anyone else’s and I learned a great deal from it. Also, I learned that my optimization worked well, because I got my ranking for my name back within a week, and the targeted keyword ranked within a week as well

A few other unexpected ranking happened as well. I rank 4th for "Schutzman" on Google and 1st on Yahoo! I guess the Schutzman’s as a surname aren’t very search savvy. I also rank for "Pittsburgh artist’ on Yahoo! That wasn’t my gaol, but it is a bonus.

It’s 5PM on Friday, time to go.