The Perfectly Optimized Website

It's taken me a while, but I finally found it. Found what? The perfectly optimized website!

Ever since I'd learned about Google's page ranking system I wanted to strive for the top. But I also wanted to find those pages that were at the very top, to see just what it is that they'd done.

That search began in earnest, as I first went looking at the top ten sites, based on Alexa's ranking. Google's site has a perfect 10, but we can't count that. Or can we, since none of the other search engines have a page rank of 10. Nope, had to exclude them, if only for bias. I then went through the next 10; nothing.

At that point, I just started searching big name sites at random, hoping I would just happen upon one. But it wasn't happening, and I was getting depressed. Then I finally decided that there just wasn't any way to obtain a perfect score, and I would have to be satisfied with those sites I found that had 9's; that's very good also.

Lo and behold, I finally found a site that has the perfect 10 rating by Google. I was researching something regarding standards for proper CSS had HTML, and that search lead me to this site: http://www.w3c.org/, or W3C: The World Wide Web Consortium.

My mind was swimming; the perfect website! Not only that, but it had an Alexa rank of 230 at the time; even better. In a weird way, it showed just how diverse ranking properties can be; Alexa says it shows the web prominence of a website, and though 230 isn't bad, it seems to shake things up, even if only in a minor fashion, because how can such a page be considered as perfect by one company and only #230 in another?

Frankly, I don't care. I don't care because I found perfection. And what perfection; why should I have expected anything less than what this pages shows me.

And just what does it show me? Well, first it has lots of content; these people were made to create content, which is easy for them to do because they have so many contributors. I looked at the source codes; how wonderful they are. When you look at the main page, start in the middle first. This shows how content doesn't have to be rambling, or even one coherent thought. These people don't just have a list of content; they have one paragraph explaining what they're going to give you, with links galore. All of the links go to other pages within the website; you almost never leave this site.

Along the top and the sides are even more links. Each one takes you to very organized pages, and every single one of those pages have lots and lots of links, all going somewhere else within the site. On the left side of this page all the links are in alphabetical order; on the right, they're grouped by category designations.

One very special page is their table of contents, which is here: http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/. Every single line in the actual table of contents, which looks like a large outline, is a link. Each link takes you to a page, which leads you to many other links and pages, and it goes on and on. Frankly, I don't know that one person could read this entire site in a week without having to start again from the beginning, there's so much here.

This is the icon, the standard upon which we are all based. And frankly, I have to admit that I'd elated and sad at the same time. I'm elated because I finally found perfection, and I know what I want to shoot for. And I'm sad because, unfortunately, I'm never going to attain this. As a sole proprietor, I will never be able to match this kind of content, and I write all the time. Even if I add staff, which I hope to with my search engine optimization business, and some of my other businesses, I can't see where we would ever be able to spend the kind of time it takes to put together something like this. Others may not see it the same way I do, but this is a beautifully put together site; I almost want to cry.

I can only hope that one day, when I'm old and gray, I'll remember what it was like the day I saw perfection, and knew it would never be me.

© SEO Xcellence, 2007