For the last several weeks, I’ve been trying my hand at some amateur SEO (or, Search Engine Optimisation) with my rankings for Fore Score on the term “golf stats” and I’ve had a bit of success. People don’t search for “golf stats” quite a whole lot, and the competition is pretty stiff at the top of the rankings, but I thought I’d give it a shot anyway just to see how I could do.

When I started this, Fore Score was the 10th result on the first page for a “golf stats” search on Google. Occasionally, it was dipping to the top of the 2nd page as well. After working on some of the code and putting extra effort into getting targeted backlinks with the right anchor text I’ve seen Fore Score rise to the #4 or #5 position depending on when you run the search. I’d say that’s a step in the right direction. I’ve managed to outrank some pretty large competitors: Sports Illustrated, Golf.com and USA Today to name three of the biggest.

This has been an interesting little experiment. In the world of Internet marketing, SEO and monitoring and tracking keywords and search engine results is a part of daily life. Internet marketers usually have a much better understanding of these things than someone like myself, who is mainly focused full-time on web development.

I’m probably going to switch my focus to another keyword or keyphrase here as the summer wraps up. I’ll keep everyone posted on the results.