The champagne corks are popping over here at Talk of the Sound. After a major overhaul of the web site (and news that Google recently tweaked their algorithm) we suddenly finding the site ranked in the Top 10 search results for the keyword “New Rochelle”.
Most people use a search engine to find things on the web and most of them use Google (about 65%) so being ranked high in Google is a big deal. Few people do other than look at the first 10 results (if they do not find what they want 99% of users will conduct a new search) so being on the first page of results is a huge big deal.
Two years we were ranked #3,342,241. Last year we got into the Top 100 then Top 50 and more recently, since the summer, have bounced around in the Top 20 getting as low as 11 but never quite to the magical 10 rank. Today we hit #9. Yahoo!
These rankings tend to jump around lot based on a variety of factors so we may bounce in and out of the Top 10 in the coming weeks and months but at least for today we breached an important threshold. At some point, a virtuous circle develops, where being in the Top 10 gets you more click-thru’s and this keeps you ranked high. We’re hoping we get the benefit of that.
Either way, keep reading and thanks for your support. I want to give a special thanks to Alex Yuriev who did all the heavy-lifting in converting the site from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6 which I believe was the single biggest factor in pushing us into the Top 10.