Why Does that Website Outrank Mine?

In another section of the learning center, we talked about search engine ranking factors. These factors come into play when answering the question, "Why does that website outrank mine?"

I can better illustrate this with a real-life example. Here's an actual conversation I had with a client once. I've used fictional company names.

Client: "I have a question about my search engine rankings."

Me: "Okay. Fire away."

Client: "I'm a little frustrated that XYZ Home Builder outranks me in the search engines."

Me: "Aside from your competitive nature, why does that bother you?"

Client: "Well, because we build four times the volume of XYZ Builder. Our business has been around for a lot longer, and we've won a ton of awards that they don't have."

Me: "But search engine ranking isn't determined by people who examine your revenue and reputation. In fact, rankings aren't determined by people at all. They're generated by computer forumlas — algorithms — that only take web-based criteria into account."

Client: "How is that fair?"

Me: "It's fair because it rewards the most relevant and most popular websites, not the most successful companies. Search engines evaluate websites, not the companies behind them. Tell you what, why don't I generate an apples-to-apples to comparison between you and XYZ Home Builder and see what advantages they might have over you."

[Next day, after creating a comparison report.]

Me: "This report shows the difference between your website and XYZ Home Builder's website. You can see I've compared website age, number of inbound links, number of indexed pages and other factors. You can also see that XYZ Home Builder's website is six years older than yours. That's an advantage we can't do much about, because Google favors older websites."

Still me: "You have more pages indexed by Google, and your inbound links are in the same ballpark as theirs, both in quantity and quality. So it comes down to the age factor ... they have an older website. We can focus on acquiring more inbound links, and at some point that might overcome the age difference in your favor."

Conclusion

Outranking a particular website should not be the goal of a search engine optimization program. In fact, I think this notion is commonly based on ego, not business sense. Take the two builders above. Clearly there's enough home-building business in most cities to keep many builders busy.

Bottom Line on Search Engine Rankings

Many business websites get more than enough qualified traffic to support their business goals. But most of this traffic leaves the site without doing anything. If you ask me, too many companies obsess over search engine rankings and "arch rivals," when they should be finding ways to capitalize on the traffic they already have.

Find an SEO professional you trust, and let him or her worry about your visibility. Spend your time focusing on things like product development, customer service and lead generation. Your business will be better for it.

Related question: What's the point of SEO?