Getting internal SERPs to rank

Trying to leverage our internal search better

[neo schmeichel]

I'm working on a retail sales website, and we're trying to figure out how to leverage our internal SERPs better for external SEO. In other words, we're trying to get internal SERPs for a term like "green widgets for killing orcs" to rank for these terms.

I've noticed that in the industry in which I work, a number of larger sites have been able to do this, and I think that we could make it work for ours as well. We're already rewriting the SERP urls, but that's not doing a whole lot. My next step, I think, is to dynamically generate the page title using the search term. And from there, try linking to some of the SERPs with search phrase as the anchor text (this works best for searches that cross category boundaries, I would think). Obviously, for this last step I would plan to only create such links in such a way that they would be useful to users.

What other things come to mind for something like this? Has anyone else optimized their internals SERPs? Is this just a pipe dream?

[dickbaker]

Try to get links from other sites to your internal pages, not just your home page.

When I get a link exchange request, I'll ask that the link on the reciprocal site be to one of my internal pages that I'm trying to boost rankings for.

Also, I post on a lot of forums within my site's niche, and I add links to various internal pages in my signature line.