So? Is it Working 15?

It’s numbers time! 15 weeks in.

1. 134 (-33) Organic searches over the last 30 days
2. 74 (+17) Percentage derived from organic searches over the last 30 days divided by the same period a year previous
3. 7 (+9) Position of “large cottages devon” in Google search
4. 31 (0) Position of “stag party houses” in Google search
5. 57 (+15) Position of “40th birthday party ideas” in Google search
6. 47 (+3) Position of “50th birthday party ideas” in Google search
7. 40 (+18) Position of “party house with pool” in Google search
8. Unranked Alexa rank
9. 2.6 (+0.8) Moz rank
10. 19 (+1) Domain Authority
11. 32 (+10) Trust Flow
12. 32 (+14) Citation Flow
13. 226 (+55) External links in Google Search Console
14. 35 (+10) Linking sites in Google Search Console

The values in brackets are the change from the original benchmarks of So? Is it Working 1? Positives are good news and what we are hoping for, negatives are not so good.

Well I have to say, pretty much everything is up and those are about the best figures we’ve had, so that’s a good thing! I must temper the enthusiasm though with the rather brutal observation that there has not really been any significant improvement in the organic searching as far as actual clicks and therefore visits to the site are concerned. And that was, after all, kind of the whole point of my endeavours! I think the honest truth is that it makes no real difference if you are in position 50 or 20; neither one will get you a click. You have to be on the first page and it has to be a busy search term. So, although things are going the right way I think they will have to go a lot further if they are to make any worthwhile difference.

But the good news is…

We’ve taken seven bookings in the first seven days of the year! Which, when you consider we only take up to 50 bookings in a whole year normally, is excellent news. I’d love to say it is down to all my recent organic orientated efforts, but I think it is actually either purely chance, or more probably, down to something else I’ve done.

Guess again

Now I know how much you enjoy a good guessing game so try this: How many times do you think our advert has appeared on a screen in the first seven days of this year? I’ll give you a clue: in the previous year for the same seven days our advert showed about 67,000 times.

Well done if you guessed 345,000, otherwise bad luck. (Ok, I agree, it wasn’t a very good clue.) But it is how many times our advert appeared and without a significant cost increase to us. Naturally most people ignored it, but 5735 did not and that is up from 2055 a year ago. All those people, someone would surely book – and seven did! It really is all about the numbers, and the more numbers the better!

If that dramatic increase had been down to organic searching then I could sit back, put my feet up and smoke a cigar. But obviously it wasn’t. What did I do? Well, that is going to have to wait for a future post!

Date of Activity: 7th January 2019

Looking for large holiday houses with a pool in Devon? Planning a special party or family occasion? Bicclescombe Grange is the perfect venue, sleeping 26 with an amazing indoor pool, hot tub, snooker table and many more fantastic facilities. To find out more visit the Bicclescombe Grange website.