So I started a local SEO company with my best friend of 20 years.  She's a friendly, outgoing person and I'm more of a technical, stay-behind-the-computer-screen type of person.  So it is a perfect match.  Eventually, we will learn each other's roles, but for now, just starting out, this is a great arrangement.  

We agreed to take on a local business and give them a total package with all our services for free in exchange for a testimonial.  We chose my daughter's youth group leader, who also has a party planning service.  We asked her if she would be interested and she was thrilled.  We told her that in 3 months, we would ask her for an honest testimonial.  

She came in for the first interview and we took a look at her current website.  It was a free website with advertising and absolutely no traffic.  We discussed domain names and she decided on one and purchased it.  I installed WP on it and started doing SEO on it.

Within 48 hours, she was #5 on the Google SERP for her main keywords!  I was amazed!  Now, 3 weeks later, she is still at #5 but also at #10 for her company-related facebook page.  Granted, it isn't a highly competitive market, but I was shocked as this is our first client and my first attempt at local SEO.

For the last few days, I've been listing her with local and industry-specific directories.  So Local.com called her and was trying to talk her into going with their SEO service.  She said he was "pulling things up on the computer" and he couldn't find anything that I hadn't already done.  He asked her for her main keywords, typed them into Google and said "oh, you're already on the first page of the search results".  Everything he tried to sell her on, I had covered.  Eventually, he admitted that her SEO was "doing an amazing job"!!    I think it's going to be a safe bet that I get a great testimonial from her!

So I'm pretty proud of myself tonight.  I'm sitting here writing and just grinning!  I knew I could do it if I tried!