Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Rankings - The Inside Passage

When it come to getting ranked well in the search engines most people think in terms of their website as a whole.  Where does my website rank in Google?  Where do I rank in Yahoo? These are the questions search engine optimization companies get asked all the time. 

The first thing we must know is the term being searched for.  The website owner may be searching for their site under the term “architectural hardware” and not be showing up at all in Google or Yahoo for that term.  But if they searched for “architectural products” they could be on the first page of both the major search engines.   

Next we have to think of a website site not only as a single entity but as a collection of pages brought together to make up that logical and actual whole.     Much like a non-fiction book a website is usually about a single subject.  In the case of a business that subject is the business itself.   

Of course the most important page of your site is the home page.  This is the one that most visitors will see first when entering your site.  It should attract and interest your visitors enough so they don’t just click away looking for something ”better”.   But, depending on the size of your site, you could have several or even hundreds of other pages each of which has the potential of ranking in the search engines and attracting and interesting visitors as well. 

A larger site has distinct advantages in a highly market.  With more pages there is more for your visitor to see, learn and do.  So he or she stays longer.  The longer the visitor stays on your site the better your chance they will save one of your pages as a “favorite place”, buy your product or use your services.   Another advantage is the more pages the better your odds of getting indexed and ranked well by the search engines.  Additionally each page can be optimized for a specific search phrase.  This increases even more the opportunity for Yahoo or Google to rank your site well within their search results.   

Those inside pages are an inside track from the search engines onto your site.  Once the visitor enters your website you have a chance of turning them into a client or customer no matter what page they entered on. 

Type any term into Google or Yahoo and you will get an idea of how important the inside pages are to a website's search engine ranking.  Let’s take a couple of terms at random.  I just typed "computer monitor" into Yahoo.  All but one of the pages that came up in the natural listings were pages within a site.  That's nine out of ten.  I typed “lap dog” into Google and it came up fifty-fifty.  Five had “lap dog” in the domain name.  Five were domains with pages that had “lap dog” in the name. 

Moral of the story is treat each page of your site as an individual part of the greater whole and optimize it separately and well.   

Sometimes the best way into the search results is by the Inside Passage.