TJ You are a Genius

This is a follow on from the posts – How I started in SEO and Always Expect The SEO Bubble To Burst – Go back and read those 1st.

If you have read my previous posts you will know I had very little idea about coding or database management at the time and the way I was doing things was laughable at best.

So I had this, what I considered brilliant, system for creating static HTML pages using an asp file company.asp?strBusinessName – The problem was that I had to manually add the business name after the /company.asp?strBusinessName= to create the page and this was quite time consuming.

It was then that I had another genius idea 🙂

I already had a .asp file that pulled the last 20 listings in the database how about adapting this so it created a link, which in turn created a page

I quickly edited the page and rather than it just pulling info of the latest 20 istings it now had a link to /company.asp?strBusinessName=thebusinessname and by simply clicking the link I dynamically created the page which I would then use to create the static HTML page (you can see where this is going can’t you).

To speed things up I edited the latest listing page to return 200 results instead of 20 and went to bed.

Rats – My page creation system was getting indexed in Google

A couple of days later I noticed that the file I was using to create my static pages had got indexed in Google and initially I was pissed off by this as the primary intention of the file wasn’t to get the pages indexed but to use it to create static pages – Then the lightbulb moment happened – Why on earth am I going to all the trouble of creating static pages whicjh would probably take weeks when I had a file that could instantly create 17,000 pages?

The Lightbulb Moment

After initially being pissed off that the dynamic .asp versions of my pages were getting indexed in Google it suddenly dawned on me that dynamic was the way to go rather than static – Why manually create pages when I had created a system that did it for me?

I adapted the .asp template so the page title and meta descriptions were better, the layout was better and crucially made space for some AdSense then sat back and let the latest listings asp file create the pages and within days not only were hundreds of pages indexed they were ranking high in Google.

I had effectively created what was one of the 1st business directories that gave each individual business listing it’s own highly ranked page.

Churning out the pages

My latest listings .asp file was effectively only creating 200 pages so I thought will it still work if I increase it to 500 – it did 🙂

I then had the idea of creating 10 latest listings files all pulling 500 listings and interlink them together (effectively creating a sitemap) within days 5,00 pages were indexed.

After a few more days of creating latest listings pages and lots of interlinking all 17,000 business listings were not only indexed but ranking well – TJ you’re a genius I thought 🙂

Continue the story here – Building a Business Directory

The Sim64 SEO Story

The Sim64 SEO Story Continues (start from the bottom post)

• Working From a Hospital Bed
• TJS Marketing Ltd – Setting up new business TJS Marketing Ltd
• The Good And Bad Years
• Still No Inspiration – Then Got The Bug Back
• More Web Work and SEO
• Back to the Web Work
• Google Panda Update
• Google Plus Google Author Rank and More
• Setting up Google Maps Listings
• Why I don’t like doing SEO for Other people
• Sim64 The Start of the WordPress Years and SEO
• Released From The Google Minus 30 Penalty
• No More Self Editing
• Business Directory Listings Explode
• Giving up the Day Job
• Sim64.co.uk Mothballed
• We Had No Google Webmaster Tools or Google Search Console Back Then
• The Google Minus 30 Penalty -30
• V7ndotcom Elursrebmem
• Building a Business Directory
• TJ You are a Genius
• Always Expect The SEO Bubble To Burst
• ** How I Started Out In SEO **

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