Industry News & Trends

In the search engine world, there are many unwritten rules about rankings (sometimes they're not entirely true). Let's take a look at some of them:

Take rankings with a grain of salt
Rankings are meaningless if they're not associated with traffic. Traffic may not always result in immediate sales, but you need to generate your share of traffic to help B2B and B2C consumers get to know your company. Take a closer look at a page if it's only helping you generate rankings for keywords and phrases people seldom use.

Google is everything
It's not the least bit true. Combined, quite a bit of traffic can come from MSN, Yahoo!, Ask and other websites, especially in the rapidly growing social communities.

You need to be in the top 10
No, not really. Yes, #1 wouldn't be too bad. But you can get traffic from other positions like #15, #25, etc. As your search engine optimization program matures, you can benefit from whatever traffic comes your way.

If two or more pages rank for the same page, take decisive action
You don't need to keep both. You're really hurting yourself if you do. Yes, anyone would love to be #2 and #3 for separate pages. Usually that doesn't happen. You're better off dealing with reality.

For example, if you're #7 on one page and #19 on another page for the same term, think through the dilemma you face. Depending on the page configuration (i.e. content), you may be able to adjust the #19 page over time to rank well. The question isn't whether the page has a compelling call to action. It's whether the page can accommodate one at some point.

In either case, figure out which page you want to free up to support another search term that can't seem to rank for another page you targeted.

New pages may take time to rank
No one knows the exact date a page will mature (supported by inbound links), but don't rule out a ranking too soon for a page you just created. If you can, call attention to the new page by giving it a prominent link (or links) from other notable content on your web site.

Rankings, page titles and meta descriptions go hand in hand
Once you achieve a high ranking, it's critical that you touch up your page title (the blue hyperlink in Search Engine Result Pages or SERPs). Add a single word or two that describe why you're great. Include your company name. And then watch the ranking. The number of characters you add can hinder your ranking. You need to do this in small steps.

You have more latitude with the meta data. If you feel the need to update the description, by all means improve what you've written.

If a search engine that ranks you well includes a portion of your web site content (instead of the meta description) for the results page description, update that web site copy - in a very small manner. Any change to your visible text can affect your ranking based on the copy the search engine pulls for the SERPs.