#1 on Google, how search engine ranking works
So many times, we get requests from clients who want to be “#1 on Google”, and when we ask them, “For what term”, we get a confused silence.
Since search engines like Google and others are basically relevance machines, every search term will return a different set of search results depending on how the search engine see’s a website in relation to the search term used. Even very close terms such as ‘exit interview’ and ‘exit interviews’ will return different results.
This is why keyword research is so important, and why we stress it as crucial before pursuing any other ranking efforts. It's unwise to assume that a word or phrase is an obvious choice to target, because it may have other meanings that draws unproductive site traffic for you. A high bounce rate from any of your pages can indicate that you may need to retarget your keyword selection.
Fritoliciouscheezmunkee.com
#1 on Google, does not mean much unless we ask the question, for what search term?. For instance, if you want to rank #1 on Google for the term ‘Fritoliciouscheezmunkee’, you'll pretty much have the run of the show with very little effort. The reason is that no one is searching for that term, and no sites are competing for it. By contrast, being #1 for the term ‘books’, will put you in direct competition with sites like amazon.com, and will require a lot of ongoing effort.
Between those two extremes though, there are millions of search terms to target which will draw profitable traffic. For instance, most sites are not broad enough that it would make sense to target a term like 'books'. Ask some questions about your site; Does your site offer to sell books, write them, buy them, store them, collect them, burn them? What kind of books? Where are you located? All these questions narrow your targeted terms to phrases like 'science fiction bookstore Dayton, Ohio'. A term like this will bring in higher quality traffic because it's more specific. A broad, high volume term might just bring you loads of mostly useless traffic unless the scope of your site is equally broad. So, don't be a cheezmunkee; be #1 for the search term that brings you quality traffic!
