Really, people... your pages DON'T exist in a vacuum!

Many of you know that I got started in online marketing before Google even existed. I was doing SEO when you had to try and get ranked in Webcrawler, Infoseek, and Lycos. Altavista came along and became the first-game changer in the search game. Next up was Goto, which proved that PPC search results were viable. In fact, I wrote the first commercially-available Goto campaign bid optimization system, a system I sold for a healthy profit when I recognized that Goto (which had then become Overture) was about to fall off the market lead.

Suffice it to say, I've been around SEO for a long time.

The point of my thread is to simply make sure folks who are newer to the game understand a couple of key points about their sites, their pages, and the SERPs.

The first is that it is your PAGES and not your SITE that is ranked by the top search engines such as Google. People often say: "my site was ranked #3 in Google yesterday but today it is on page 2". Well, not exactly. Your PAGE was #3 for those SPECIFIC keywords and now that PAGE is on the second page for the same keywords.

Each page within your site could rank better or worse for any particular keywords than other pages within your site. Just because your "site" is a health and fitness site doesn't mean that a page in your site won't rank well for keywords that don't seem like a natural fit with the overall theme of your site.

Just remember: you can SEO your site, but where SEO counts the most is on the pages.

The second is that your pages don't exist in a vacuum. Too often I see people here make a post that says something like: "my page was #2 in Google for certain keywords last week, then I did some backlinking over the weekend, and now my page is ranked #6 in Google -- what happened? Did my backlinks kill my ranking?"

Remember, too, people that your pages DON'T exist in a vacuum. If you're working every day to pump your site up in the Google listings, don't you believe that your COMPETITORS are doing the same? While I under the POV, you have to also understand that practically EVERYONE is pumping their pages in the SERPs with just about every known method. When the rankings get shaken up it doesn't mean that you did something WRONG, it may simply mean that your competitors for those keywords did something RIGHT.

You're not the only one trying to get their pages ranked higher.

Ok, so off my soapbox now...