Website Verticals & The Search Engines

Website verticals are becoming more popular in the search engines and are the future of SEO.

So what is a vertical website  ?

If you are a SEO’r you will probably might know what a vertical is, but if not its now time to take note as it will assist you in getting better returns (ROI) for your clients. For all the designers who are reading this, it might just well be one of the most important things you need to know when building a website from scratch for a new client.

OK, back to what a website vertical is; it’s quite simple really, think of it this way: Lets use  youtube for the example. Why would you search on Google for a video when you can go directly to youtube and search there? Why would you go to Bing and search for a holiday or a business trip or would you go to expedia or travelsupermarket.com. As you can see by the two examples a vertical is a site that is dedicated to one topic/service/product set.

Give a website topic focus

Many sites that I see do not make the site focused on on topic but more a bit about everything. So back to you designers, when a client is after a new design make the client aware that they need to dedicate the site to cover one topic, it will assist them in generating potentially better positionings in the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages).

I hear you say “why is this important?”

This quite easy to explain; when a search engine reads a page it also associates and makes its opinion on a site by also taking into consideration on what the rest of the site discusses. If a site is dedicate to a certain topic then it helps you get a better authority for the topic and it indirectly assists all the other pages of the site.

In conclusion

I once got asked to optimize a website that was part plumber and part home worker website. What ? It happens more than you might imagine, two partners, or a husband and wife; who both have their own businesses but only want one site, this just does not work, get TWO sites.

Make sure that a website is topic focused. Amen.

To find out more about the future of SEO from SEOmoz.org

Tags: website verticals