Relevance in SEO (Testing a Theory Here...)

So, our website (in my signature) is currently being indexed by Google and has a ways to go. We launched in March. It's an info site we hope will attract consumers who might be more inclined to seek out services like credit repair, legal aid, etc that we'll later approach to advertise on our site when the traffic is flowing... if the traffic is flowing - we'll see). We anticipate high traffic volume if the site indexes well, and we'll redirect those who are shopping to an insurance quote request page that we'll then approach insurance companies with... kind of a hopscotch or leap frog kind of strategy if you want to call it that.

We're experimenting to see what works in the search engines and what doesn't. We're well aware of many SEO strategies out there, and this is just one we thought might test well considering what other sites are doing. I've been tracking the progress so far and thought I'd ask those who have more experience with ranking in competitive areas if this scenario has had any positive affect on your ranking if you've actually used it for an advertising site:

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Over the course of about 40 days, we have indexed 'somewhere' in the rankings for over 96 search phrases (some deliver sputters of traffic, nothing to write home about, but w/e), and the majority of them appear to be relevant to our target keyword phrases. We have yet to index for our target keyword phrases, but I think it will be interesting to see if this works. If you cannot tell what the target keyword phrases are, then we definitely have a problem.

I've used SEO XRay to view several referral links to high-ranking websites and see what kind of inbound links exist behind the scenes.

We should all know that 'internal' links come from your own pages and 'external' links come from the pages of other websites. Google does not care about the number of different sites linking to a competitive site. What Google does seem to care about is where pages index in its directory, where they show up in the keyword search when they are linking to the page you are viewing. So, if our website has a page that indexes for a different, related keyword, that 'internal' inbound link still carries some kind of juice with it... relevance.

So, I have a theory about internal and external links where it concerns relevance... a large number of internal links that index for more relevant keyword searches is just as good as a small number of targeted 'external' inbound links from another domain. All that may really matter (and this is just a theory, I hope to see it be proven with this launch) is the relevance of the keyword search phrases that are associated with the various pages linking to the main page of your site.

So, if you have tons of pages that only rank for a handful of keyword searches returning your home page in the index, forget about it... your big site won't get you ranked. Unless you have a larger variety of keyword search phrases returning some form of inbound link, regardless of whether they're internal or external, you will not index well. The page content has something to do with it only to the extent that the content helps the page in question to index for some keyword search. If that keyword search phrase bringing up the page that links to your site is relevant to your keyword search phrase, you will see an improvement in rank.

It's just a theory. I don't have any first-hand proof or evidence other than the dozen or so websites I reviewed in the real estate industry that tend to do this successfully... so, I guess we'll see. I'll keep tracking the progress and let folks know, but I'd love to hear from those who have seen this approach to ranking well in the search engines work or fail before.

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I also welcome feedback on the website as well. As business owners and entrepreneurs, I'm sure insurance might have crossed your minds at some point. I'm certainly interested to know if the site provides the kind of information you might expect it to offer, what else we could include, and anything you Pro's might recommend for improving our efforts here.