Two days after putting my new blog up, and I’m now…

• The number 1 result on Google for Joe Hardy (up from page 1, position 6)
• The number 3 result on Google for Joe Blog (up from page 2, position 5)

Talk about overnight improvement! A lot of my approach with the new design had SEO enhancements in mind, but there was no way I was expecting that kind of immediate effect.

Here’s what I made a point of focusing on most:

• Making proper use of document structure (ie tags like H1, H2, H3, STRONG etc)
• Ensuring that the page hierarchy was as simple as possible (not too many nested DIVs, avoiding tables, etc)
• ALT attributes on images, TITLE attributes on links
• Using the awesome Wordpress URL Rewriting ISAPI Filter for IIS by Dean Lee – great work Dean, thanks!

That’s pretty much it.

Yes, I know that I really have no need to be getting top rankings out of Google. But it’s certainly educational and it’s helped me get a good grip on what search engines look for.