In reply let me first say that I haven't done any SEO work on my websites...yet.  One reason is that I am very busy and increasing my Internet Marketing on these websites would only make me busier and, frankly, I don't know if I can handle much more work.

Another reason is because I am married to Lisa.  My wife owns a company called Beach Baby Quilts.  She makes and sells baby and lap quilts in stores and on her website (which I manage.)  If anyone was going to get their website "worked on" it was www.beachbabyquilts.com. 

So my initial and continuing SEO project was to get my wife's website in a place of prominence in the Search Engines.

After a complete re-design of the website (our daughter is a graphic designer) I decided to put all my eggs in one basket.  I initiated a no-holes barred effort to target the search phrase "Baby Quilts."  If I were any good, this is my chance to prove it.

The search term "Baby Quilts"  is highly competitive.  Google returns 1.8 million websites in response to this query.    Keyword Effective Index (which compares "the number of times a keyword is searched for" with "the amount of competition for that keyword"  1 is bad, 400 is tops )  for Baby Quilts is .23  Not even a whole number!  I definitely had my work cut out for me.

I manipulated the meta tags, tweaked the on-page text, began a reciprocal linking project and continued to monitor the website's performance.

In 2005, www.beachbabyquilts averaged 900 unique visitors per month.  It is a small, one person company and with 30 visitors per day, she was selling about one quilt per week.  My wife and I thought that was not too bad!

I continued to work on her website, tweaking the page text some more, adding more link partners and changing the link text to target her primary keyword phrase, "Baby Quilts."

In 2006, Lisa's website made it to the first page of Google, at first she had a #5 ranking and, later it moved to #4.  During that year, her average monthly visitors jumped to 1500.  That's 50 visitors per day.  Wow.  Being on the first page really made a difference.  Lisa had to concentrate on making more quilts!  If Lisa were a paying customer, she would probably be satisfied with these results and be happy with the increased business.  But she wasn't paying me.

Since this was, after all, my showcase website, I wasn't content on her being #4.  I continued a'tweaking away, making small, subtle changes, noting their effect on Search Engine standings and then, making more changes.  All the while, the reciprocal linking project continued.

www.beachbabyquilts.com  has now achieved a #1 position in Google, Yahoo AND MSN Search.

So far in 2007, she is averaging 2700 unique visitors per month!  That is triple the amount she had two years ago!  Needless to say, her quilts are flying out the door.  We ship our quilts via Priority or Express Mail (U.S.P.S.) and can be seen regularly at the post office.

It was a long and time consuming three years but we did achieve our goal.  Go ahead, open your favorite search engine and do a search for  baby quilts.  You will find www.beachbabyquilts.com at the top.  I'm not saying it will be #1 when you look, the top rankings tend to fluctuate.  Whoever we bumped out of #1 when we got it will probably do what they can to get it back.  If and when they do, I'll continue to "do my thing" to get Lisa back on top. Needless to say her prominent position will continue and her business will thrive.