Every Day with Rachael Ray

Rachael Ray recently teamed up with The Reader's Digest Association, Inc. to create a new lifestyle magazine bearing her name. Along with the launch of the magazine, there's a push to establish a strong web presence in the form of a web site that shares the magazine title: Every Day with Rachael Ray.

The Challenge: Obtain Organic Search Engine Traffic

Years ago it was sufficient to build a site and then sit back and wait for the users to come rolling in. However, companies have been prolific and there are now billions of pages of content out on the world wide web.

To deal with such a large amount of information, web users have turned to search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN for help. In fact, a 2006 recent report from Comscore Networks showed that Americans conducted 6.6 billion searches in April 2006 Furthermore, a study by MarketingSherpa revealed that 78% of search engine users don't look past or click on results beyond the first 5 that are displayed.

Part of the plan for success for the Every Day with Rachael Ray site was to ensure that users found the site as often as possible regardless of the search engine used.

The Solution: Search Engine Optimizing (SEO) from the Ground Up

Search engine optimization is the key to organic traffic from search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. This meant that I had the opportunity to put together an SEO strategy that described, in detail, SEO-related activities prior to launch, around the time of launch (short-term), and post-launch (long-term).

The Results: High Rankings and Search Traffic

Eight months after the site's launch, it is clear that my SEO efforts were having the desired effect. First off, rankings for key terms such as Rachael Ray are very good: position 5 in Google, 1 in Yahoo, and 5 in MSN. In addition, there are many non-branded terms (which I won't reveal here) for which the site ranks well.

More importantly, traffic from search engines represents a significant percentage of overall traffic and is increasing every month.

Every Day with Rachael Ray Search Traffic

Role

Search Engine Optimization Specialist

Reader's Digest (2004 to 2006)

Akri Consulting (1999 to 2004)

Silver Systems (1996 to 1999)