I can prove it. Go ahead and search “rue 13″ in Google and see what you get. No, it’s not a bait and switch; I didn’t have a conventional HTML site in place before and put together this flash site once I saw rue13stl.com climb to the top of the SERPs. And what sort of self-respecting nightclub would stand for an website that wasn’t flash anyway? The truth is very entertaining.Getting listed successfully in search enginges is most commonly governed by relevant content. Unless you have content that matches your page titles and headings with cleverly placed keywords within your site’s copy, you’re out of luck.
Now forget about all of the passive optimization techniques mentioned above. A really nice looking site that is informative, will attract traffic. It’s just a matter of your site becoming link bait, for bloggers, city pages, and social network sites.
Rue 13 has well over 4,000 external links from all over the internet. And the anchor text in all of those hyperlinks reads, “Rue 13,” or “rue13stl.com.” This tells search engines that the keywords “Rue 13″ organically link to rue13stl.com.
Here lies the difference between SEO & search marketing. SEO passively makes your site as friendly as possible to search engines, while search marketing combines tactics into a successful strategy, accellerating your site to the top of SERPs.
Project: rue13stl.com
Web Development: Flash Website, CSS, ActionScript, PHP Formmail
Marketing: Search Optimization, Social Networking
Current Traffic Average: 1,515+ unique visits/month
Credits:
Bobby Duebelbeis, Art Direction, Copywriting, Marketing
David DeGuire, Copywriting, Marketing