What am I Doing Right?

[SportsFan]

My website provides holiday and sport team schedules for Microsoft Outlook. As a part of the service that I provide, each holiday has a page that describes the history and origin of the holiday. Many of these pages make it on page 1 of Google search results and some of them are actually the number 1 result at the top of the page. For example:


First Day of Summer
First Day of Summer - Google Search
1

Workers Mourning Day
Workers Mourning Day - Google Search
1

Boss Day
Boss Day - Google Search
1 & 2

National Boss Day
National Boss Day - Google Search
2 & 3

Easter Day
Easter Day - Google Search
3

Three Kings Day
Three Kings Day - Google Search
3 & 4

Commonwealth Day
Commonwealth Day - Google Search
4

Labour Day
Labour Day - Google Search
4

Victoria Day
Victoria Day - Google Search
5

Lincoln's Birthday
Lincoln's Birthday - Google Search
6

National Nurses Day
National Nurses Day - Google Search
6

First Day of Winter
First Day of Winter - Google Search
7

Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve - Google Search
7

Civic Holiday
Civic Holiday - Google Search
7

Washington's Birthday
Washington's Birthday - Google Search
7

Administrative Professionals Day
Administrative Professionals Day - Google Search
7 & 8

National Teacher Day
National Teacher Day - Google Search
7 & 8

First Day of Autumn
First Day of Autumn - Google Search
8




Of course I am not complaining about this. But I would like to know what I have done right on these pages so that I can do it on all of my pages.

One surprise to me is that this list is what Google considers some of my best pages. I feel that I have many other pages that are better than these. I am not talking best as in SEO. I mean best in informative content.

None of my pages have been designed specifically for SEO. I design the page purely for content and purpose. Of course, I do the basic SEO stuff, but nothing more on these pages than I have done on the others.

One interesting thing I noticed with one of my pages is for Labour Day. The Google result has the title “Origins of Labour Day” and a description “Tells how the holiday started in Canada and spread to the US.” This is very odd. This is not the title or description that I use on my website. And the result is actually to an old page on my website that no longer exists. It seems that Google got the information from another site that links to mine.

I also rank very high on some of my actual products, for example:



NASCAR Schedule for Microsoft Outlook
NASCAR Schedule for Microsoft Outlook - Google Search
1

2007 Moon Phase Schedule
2007 Moon Phase Schedule - Google Search
2



If anybody can see something that I am doing on these successful pages that I am not doing on others, I would like to get more of my pages and products listed higher in the search results. I seem to be doing something right somewhere, I just don’t know what it is.



Thanks…

[SemAdvance]

Hi Greg

You are doing basic SEO correctly.

What seems to be happening is you are hitting for keyword terms that are not very competitive nor likely to be traffic busters or revenue earning terms.

Wordtracker

No data for phrase: first day of summer

Overture
first day of summer 16.7 /day

While it seems competitive in the amount of pages, to the untrained marketer..

Results 1 - 10 of about 169,000,000 for First Day of Summer

In all reality the results are:

Results 1 - 10 of about 395,000 for "First Day of Summer"

The first set of results is the term found anywhere on a page and the second set of results is the phrase used as typed and found together on all pages.

Quite a drastic difference.

As the competition in the number of pages optimized and the popularity of the search term increase your likelihood of getting to the top decreases or becomes that much harder.

Hope this helps and continued good work!

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by SportsFan

One surprise to me is that this list is what Google considers some of my best pages. I feel that I have many other pages that are better than these. I am not talking best as in SEO. I mean best in informative content.

None of my pages have been designed specifically for SEO. I design the page purely for content and purpose. Of course, I do the basic SEO stuff, but nothing more on these pages than I have done on the others.

Why do you feel that these are the pages that Google considers best? What does best mean? I would think the visitor or people linking to you derive what they feel is best from your website. Google is simply a channel to your website. Sure they make judgments by rankings one page over another, but I don't feel this is what is "best" always for the end user.

Originally Posted by SportsFan

One interesting thing I noticed with one of my pages is for Labour Day. The Google result has the title “Origins of Labour Day” and a description “Tells how the holiday started in Canada and spread to the US.” This is very odd. This is not the title or description that I use on my website. And the result is actually to an old page on my website that no longer exists. It seems that Google got the information from another site that links to mine.

Nothing unusual here. They are getting this title and description from DMOZ. If you don't like your DMOZ title or description use the tag to block it.

[SportsFan]

Originally Posted by SemAdvance

What seems to be happening is you are hitting for keyword terms that are not very competitive nor likely to be traffic busters or revenue earning terms.

I was thinking it might be this simple, but some of my pages that rank high seem to be for very popular search terms (i.e.: "Christmas Eve"), while some that I think would be unpopular and not very competitive, such as "National Aboriginal Day", I am 3 pages back in the search results. However, with a few exceptions like these, I think you hit the nail on the head.

One other thing I was thinking about was my links to other websites. Each of my pages has a section where I refer the reader to a quality website with more information than I can provide. Most of these links are to .gov or .org websites, or to a .com if they are very high quality. I was beginning to wonder if Google put more weight in a page that made referrals to these kinds of websites, but many of my low-ranking pages have good outbound links too, and some of these listed here, like Boss Day, have no high quality outbound links.

[SportsFan]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Why do you feel that these are the pages that Google considers best? What does best mean? I would think the visitor or people linking to you derive what they feel is best from your website. Google is simply a channel to your website. Sure they make judgments by rankings one page over another, but I don't feel this is what is "best" always for the end user.

You’re right. This is especially evident when the top results are Adsense junk pages.

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Nothing unusual here. They are getting this title and description from DMOZ. If you don't like your DMOZ title or description use the tag to block it

I won’t block it. I’ll take any traffic I can get.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by SportsFan

You’re right. This is especially evident when the top results are Adsense junk pages.

I won’t block it. I’ll take any traffic I can get.

No your not blocking anything but the SE from using this title and description. You asked where it was coming from. It is coming from DMOZ. If you dont like it then use the code from the link so it is not shown any more.

[SportsFan]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

No your not blocking anything but the SE from using this title and description. You asked where it was coming from. It is coming from DMOZ. If you dont like it then use the code from the link so it is not shown any more.

I never knew they used DMOZ descriptions, so that is good to know. Still, I am nervous about making any change. It is not hurting me, and I am the number 4 result on page 1, with a page that does not exist anymore no less. I am afraid if I make any changes I would loose the traffic. But thanks for the information, I will keep this in mind if I ever need it.

[likeorganic]

Being new I would like to know too I see your in a good niche market and your site is well designed. I am wondering where are your users coming from are they from the google pages you listed or other links or a combination of the two ?.