Welcome Back Rankers X 4
I noticed yesterday when I was about to record the video that we had the first three spots in Google for the phrase “welcome back Rankers” but prior to publishing this post only one article targeting the key phrase. We also had an image being shown from the post. The other two spots were our main Blog page where we have the last five blog posts visible and my author page. My guess is that the author page will disappear from the results in the next few days as the widget on the right hand side of this page updates and removes the link to welcome back rankers post. When that happens my author page will no longer be relevant for the phrase welcome back rankers.
Small Changes Make a Big Difference
Simply by the act of publishing a blog post I will remove a page from ranking. I believe this post will replace it in Google. I just checked the Google results and my author page is no longer there but the youtube video certainly is which was only published minutes ago.
Google Needs Clear Directions
Think of your site like a department store. You need clear signage so your customers can easily find what they are looking for. The Google bot is one of those customers. The signage on your website is your link structure or navigation structure. When you change that you change how Google finds your content and where it finds it in relation to everything else. Stretching the analogy a little further – if the sporting goods section is the first thing you are greeted with when you walk in the door, that must be important. Conversely if it is stuck right in the back corner of the store with no easy way to get to it, then it mustn’t be that important. That is what happens to so many sites we see. The hero content is not easy to find in the navigation or it requires several clicks to get to. Not good for humans or bots. Don’t stick the content you want to rank for in the back corner of the store.
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
