Optimizing a Website is like optimizing a Web page

Claim: It is implied that practices that are good for Web page positioning are also good and important for Web site positioning and vv. 

Status: Not Always

This is a biggie. It can be understood in more than one way.  Every search engine optimization book, course or Web site treats a Web page like a Web site, and blurs over distinctions between them. However,

1. What is good for a Web site or for the main page of a Web site, might not be good for a Web page. It is good to create new pages and fresh content for a Web site. For example, it is NOT good to change the content of individual pages very frequently, and that includes the main page of the site.

2. An external link to a page at your site certainly helps positioning of that page. It may or may not help the Google Pagerank or authority of the main page of that site. It should, but that is not explicitly stated in the Google algorithm for example. Does it help more or less than an additional link to the main page?

3. If search engines define link importance according to relevance of the source page, can they know, for example, that a given page that discusses flowers is also part of a whole Web site about poetry, and that therefore links to poems from this flowers page are relevant and legitimate?

More Search Engine Optimization Superstitions

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