Strange Google Ranking Result

All:

In 4 short months I have achieved No. 1 organic search result in Google for "wisconsin technology attorney", one of my key search phrases. My site is Nuckles Law Firm.

What did I do right/correctly? How can I spread this kind of ranking to my other content?

Thanks for your insights and help.

Demiglaz

You tell us what you did!

According to whois, the domain has been registered for a couple of years - was it parked? were there any links to it at that time?

Your keywords are not the most competitive in the world, but it is still an achievement; but so far as I can tell, you only have one page.

To target other keywords and phrases, you'll need to grow the site, creating a targeted page for each phrase.

The down side is that Google's results for new pages are not reliable. The page may drop significantly over the next few moths, before eventually stabilising where Google thinks it should be.

Reduce the risk of that by adding more unique, relevant, related content.

Okay, let's get to the bottom of this.

This is the third version of my amateurish attempts at web site design. My previous two sites had similar content, but produced horrible organic search results. I doubt the previous sites had any back links (at least I did nothing to promote/create them).

My current site was done in ASP.NET, and because MS is pushing ASP.NET, I wonder if this helps my ranking (esp. for those using IE). Legit explanation, or another MS conspiracy theory?

I have written 2 articles since Nov. 2007, and they have been picked up by many sources through EzineArticles. When a source displays my article, it usually includes a link to y site.

Lastly, I have been running two modest Adwords campaigns since Jan. 2008. About 2,600 impressions and 13 clicks so far. Maybe the Adwords thing is helping my ranking within Google.

That's about all I can think of. Other ideas?

P.S. There are 35 pages to the current site.

Demiglaz

there are two reasons why you are listed as number one for wisconsin technology attorney..

1) you have it as your title and descrption for every page in your site.
2) it is a minority term with little competition.

You cannot fail to be listed higly for it with those two factors. Your problem is that you are highly unlikely to be listed for any other terms, as it looks like you've neglected to optimise your site for anything other than 'wisconsin technology attorney' .

This may be what you want.. in which case you've done well , perhaps by accident , perhaps not.

Optimising is all about creating an overall 'theme' for your site, followed by several little mini themes for your subsequent pages, but the two must have a relationship in order to succeed.

Your entire sites theme is 'wisconsin technology attorney', and nothing else. You cannot fail to be listed for this term... even if your website was pretty appaling (Which incidentally, its not).


You also have semi decent page rank, mainly due to your IBL's but also due to the even distribution of your pages via navigation, but you only have a handful of pages so this is pretty much automatic.

PS it has nothing to do with your .asp . Search engines only read HTML, nothing else. Your ASP is creating the pages, but HTML is serving them.

Freeflyer:

Excellent observations. Thank you.

The theme for my service offerings is, in the most general terms, Wisconsin Technology Attorney. I suppose the "mini-themes" are the various and related "niche-within-a-niche" service offerings under this general theme.

If I were to redesign my site, what should I do to get a good page rank within each sub-niche?

Would I benefit from dividing my site into a number of discrete pages, each properly titled, and each maximizing key word content? In other words, making each page more specific?

How important are H1, etc., designations? I have none of these presently.

Thanks, all, for you thoughts and help.

Demiglaz

yes, use h tags.. use them use them.

Basically what you are doing when optimising a site is creating a hierarchy of terms. These also need be reflected in the H tags.

You have already decided your website is about Wisconsin Technology Attorney, and this is what you primarily want to be found for.
Your 'Wisconsin Technology Attorney' is you main target term ie the top of your hierarchy. IE it should be H1 on ALL pages.

Now, lets assume you have a page about Mediation Services. and you want to be found for mediation services associated with Wisconsin Technology Attorney. So, what you would do is keep the title tag on your mediaton page to read something like the following...
'NUCKLES LAW FIRM - Wisconsin Technology Attorney - Mediation Services'
Wha you're doing is keeping the main term in your titles, but also bringing the hierarchy into it. In terms of titel tags for this page, H1 would be 'Wisconsin Technology Attorney' and your H2 would be 'Mediation Services'. The rest of your page content would then focus on mediation services.
(Other pages would be similar ie 'NUCKLES LAW FIRM - Wisconsin Technology Attorney - Vendor Negotiations').

What you've done is created a page primarily about mediation services WITHIN a website which is primarily about Wisconsin Technology Attorney. Make sense? Search engines will see this relationship.

Now, a lot of people will disaggree with this, and a lot of people wont. Welcome to the search engine world. What everyone will agree one is THEMES . ie youhave to tell the search engines what your site is about ! once you have done this, tell it what the pages are about.

PS good page rank is about two things. Getting pagerank in the first place, and then distrubuting it evenly across the site, and this basically means making sure each page has a link to every other page, think of it as giving each page a little bit of pagerank each. Getting links to deeper pages (ie non home page) also helps.

35 pages?

I use firefox, and (after a close look) I can see one (contact).

I see others in the source (among 5,000 &nbsp, but none are visible to me.

Anyone else getting that?

"IE it should be H1 on ALL pages."

Best not. Each page should highlight different key words / phrases, not all the same one.

Your <TITLE>s might say "mediation from Wisconsin Technology Attorney" and "contracts from Wisconsin Technology Attorney" and "Patents from Wisconsin Technology Attorney" (or similar, you can see the point).

SEs don't look at SITES, they look at PAGES, for the most part. And it's usually best to build on that basis.

"this basically means making sure each page has a link to every other page, think of it as giving each page a little bit of pagerank each."

Fine if your site is very small; but even at 35 pages, it makes for pretty cumbersome code: code bloat is no fun and no help.

Don't 'overoptimise'; it's major cause of sick site syndrome.

Much better to have a hierarchy of navigation: Front page links to a few 'section indexes' (plus maybe a few selected pages), then each 'section index' leads to a few selected pages.

Think about a site map, to help get all those pages spidered.

If you have good, logical, site wide navigation, then page rank will be fairly evenly distributed, fear not. Tinkering to focus on certain areas can be done, but it is not for faint hearted, especially as you get no feedback on what you've done for three months. VISIBLE page rank is ALWAYS at least three months out of date; REAL page rank is updated with each spidering. Plus page rank is not, these days, important enough to obsess about.

Quadrille... were saying the same thing. Regarding the pagerank i was trying to put it in its most basic.. if you want to dsitrubute pagerank evenly, give each page a link to every other page.. cant get more equal than that. we know there are exceptions but in its most basic form, this is pagerank distribution.

Regarding the H1 tags, it depends on the site, in this case the terms 'mediation services' are directly related to demiglaz's main terms (wisconsin technical attorney) and not a term on their own. Ie he wants to be found for mediation services associated with technical attorneys in wisconsin.
Admittedly, if he was writing on article purely on mediation services alone ,or banana sandwiches, then yes you would target the H1's for this term only. Agreed?

I certainly agree that H1 can overlap, but I think your 'on every page' advice could easily be misinterpreted.

Better to say each page should be assessed for its H1 tag very carefully; it's one of the most important single factors.

If the 'keyphrases' for different pages mostly include two or three standard words, that's possibly OK.

But it's also important to think of human beings; Identical (or very similar) H1 tags - these are page titles - can only confuse readers!

And despite the length of this discussion, yes, I think we largely agree