#1 for Hockey.com Graphic Designer

When I launched the latest version of Vectorthis.com a few weeks ago I incorporated a lot of SEO techniques we were experimenting with while I was working as the full time web designer for Hockey.com. Last night I decided to see if any of these techniques had any effect on my placement in google searches, and to my delight I found out I’m placing #2 in google for hockey.com graphic designer.

For most of 2008 my old blog was showing up if you did a search for "Hockey.com web designer". My theory is the message I had at the top saying I was unavailable for work at the time because I was employed as the hockey.com web designer was the reason.

In other SEO news, so far I’m placing well for any search query related to my portfolio entries as well as any geo-targeted search, IE Guelph graphic design, or Guelph web design, I show up on pages 2 and 3. It’s very interesting. I’m no seasoned SEO expert, so some of my practices are still theories and hunches and I wonder if I’l retain these high rankings or if it might be a kick-start from the Google Sandbox.

Wikipedia defines the sandbox effect as:

The theory that websites with newly-registered domains or domains with frequent ownership or nameserver changes are placed in a sandbox (holding area) in the indexes of Google until it is deemed appropriate before a ranking can commence.

I haven’t changed domain names, or name servers so technically I’ve been getting indexed for the last 3 years so I doubt a switch from flash to WordPress would get me back in the sandbox.

Edit (Oct 1 2008)

Apparently this blog post replaced the homepage at #1 (source)

EDIT (Jul 27 2010)

I’ve done a poor job of keeping content fresh on this website since it went up, but my positions for Guelph graphic design and Guelph web design are holding strong. Perhaps the next update will be the difference maker.