Photo by: Sektordua Remember High School? Do you remember the Homecoming Dance, Class President, and Prom? Who won those events? If your school was like mine, it was the most popular boy and girl wearing the crowns/winning the office. In many ways, the web is like High School! Similar rules apply. The ok at how. This realization came to me while I was working with a local company to assist them in their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts. In their industry, there are thousands of companies on the web. Typing in their company name alone will generate over 2 million pages returned in Google. Yahoo and other engines return similar numbers. So think of the web as a high school with billions of students, and within your industry is like the High School clicks, with millions of students/pages.
Popularity Contest
The Homecoming King and Queen, Class President, etc. are supposed to represent the spirit of the school, certain academic standards, etc. However, in reality, it was a popularity contest. The most popular boy and girl won those coveted spots. If you remember correctly, this is true of even the leaders of each click. (Ever notice how even the non-conformist group had a group leader?) The kid who was the best role model, student, etc. rarely wins because he or she may not be hanging out with the popular crowd. In fact, usually the student who won was usually mean to everyone – but they were popular. (Watch the movie Mean Girls for reference material.) The poor new kid that just transferred that year could never stand to win one of those spots.
Who Knows Your Name
While many sites can rank well for their business name, they unfortunately do not rank well for other words or phrases that they need to be known for. If a potential customer already knows your name, then aren’t they already more a customer and less potential? Isn’t there a good possibility that they are an existing customer? Being first in the search engine for your name is like a teacher knowing your name. So what if the teacher knew your name? They were supposed to know everyone’s name. Who you want to know your name is all of the other students. You want your name to be thought of when they are picking teams, writing up the ballots for the Homecoming Court, etc. Think of the search for these positions as being similar to a web search. Who should be in the “royal court” is the search phrase, and the different students are the different search engines. They came up with a list of names, and someone was first. When a question is asked of a search engine, it comes up with a list of webpages, and someone is first. There is more than just one search engine, and each one may give slightly different results, but they are generally similar in the list.
The Big School Problem
In High School, the bigger the school, the more students it had. This made it easier is to be overlooked because of the competition. I went to two High Schools. One had a graduating class of less than 30 for my year (but I transferred before my senior year.) The other had over 530 graduating seniors. With that many, there might be 30 people “popular enough” to get on the ballot, but only five voting slots, and only one winner. Likewise, on the web, there are millions of pages relevant for a given search phrase, and thousands of sites within your industry. Not all who are worthy can make it to the first page of search results, and only one of those can be chosen for the first place. Given the number of people on the web with “your” phrases, how can you improve your ranking? They already have some popularity. “Unseating” them will be difficult, as they are already showing up on the top searches. When someone searches, they are getting those results, and therefore people are visiting and linking to that site. Since they can’t find you, they can’t visit you to determine if you should be linked to. This makes it difficult to increase your popularity. This is true not only for Google, but you can see this effect on other services like Digg, and Technorati. Sites that are buried on the second or third pages rarely are visited. And let’s not even think about the sites that are on the 50th or 100th pages. So what is one to do? In the next few articles, we will look at the generic student types in High School, and their equivalents on the web. See if you remember these students:
- The popular one
- The new kid (who was popular at their last school)
- The rebel (with or without a cause)
- The blossoming kid
I’ll look at each of these types over the next few days.
About Walter Wimberly