Posts by alpha

Google’s Promise to Web Users – Part II

Posted by alpha on Jan 16, 2010 in Search Engine Optimisation, Web Marketing | 0 comments

I received few e-mail queries and phone calls for my last blog post on Google’s Promise to Web Users. All of my folks wanted to know more to work with the Google system to achieve higher rankings.

Hence, I thought of explaining the three parts in detail.

Theme – Always consider the difference between truth and the whole truth while selecting the theme for a page. Apply the rule of whole truth to every page on the website and make sure the title is specific and unique throughout the site.

  1. A modifier that is always true is part of whole truth and is no longer just a modifier.
  2. The narrowest truth is the whole truth
  3. Narrow truth is easier to rank for than broad truth.
  4. Many pages with narrow truth beats fewer pages with broader truths.

In SEO the truth is about balance. When selecting a search phrase always remember,

If a search phrase is:

Too Broad, then

  1. Too much competition
  2. Low conversion
  3. Starts, competing with other inner pages of the website.

Too Narrow, then

  1. Too many pages to link sensibly
  2. Lots of duplication in content
  3. Very low traffic to each page (low ROI)

Reputation – When selecting link text to attach meaning to the page that links point too, always remember:

Don’t confuse Google with

  1. Navigation links like “Click Here” and “This Page”.
  2. URL links and company names

Don’t confuse searchers with

  1. Links that provide partial truth
  2. Repetitive usage of same anchor text

Confirmation – Now, make no mistake good ranking does start at home with on-page factors and reputation but it just does not end there. We also need confirmation from other sites. In general external links are the least important determinant of overall ranking once you have some but a lack of external links will cost even the best optimized website to have big trouble. The larger the website the less external linking you’ll need but all sites will need some external links because this is one of the techniques Google uses to combat so called low quality websites.

When selecting external links, always remember:

  1. Select relevant quality links
  2. Followed links are strongly preferred
  3. Link to all of your pages not just the homepage
  4. Get link text as precise as you can get.

Implementing these three systems is the only way to achieve good amount of traffic and keyword rankings.

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Google’s Promise to Web Users – Part I

Posted by alpha on Jan 9, 2010 in Search Engine Optimisation, Web Marketing | 0 comments

As I promised in my last post, I’ll try and talk on what user’s are looking for and what does Google promise.

Every one of Google’s users is looking for truth and Google promises to deliver. This is nothing but result relevance, result precision and user efficiency. These are the same standards that Google uses to evaluate results and improve their algorithm. When you learn to obey the rules to what they want they’ll reward you with higher rankings.

To do this learn to work the system, there are just really three simple parts.

  1. Theme: It is the machine interpretation of web pages. This embodies the on-page factors in search jargon.
  2. Reputation: It is the use of anchor text to attach meaning to the pages that links point too. This is an off-page factor.
  3. Affirmation / Confirmation: It is a collage of filters and reputation effects from external sources that validates and confirms what a site says about itself. Primary purpose of this part of Google’s process is to shield the above two aspects from abuse.

Getting these three parts integrated is what leads to improvement in rankings. Every page should rank for one core search phrase. Be more specific as competition is far more intense and while talking about competition, don’t compete with yourself. Every page on the website should rank for a different core search phrase. Thus the page will rank for one core keyword in addition to long-tail keywords which happens because of supporting words in the body copy.

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Google Algorithm Uncovered

Posted by alpha on Jan 2, 2010 in Search Engine Optimisation, Web Marketing | 0 comments

Internet is a world were searchers and webmasters come together to define what words mean. Webmasters are driven by their profit motives and want searchers to come to their site so they are constantly chasing what it is that searchers are looking for. Searchers meanwhile are diligently trying to figure out what they want. Both webmasters and searchers are motivated entirely by their self-interest thus come to a collective agreement on search terms.

Search-engine provides a medium to connect these crowds together. Unlike other search engines Google algorithm uses some things that we already may know. First step is to take a stack of pages, every page in the index and every single word found any where on the page is used to create a very big matrix relating words to pages as they appear in. This data structure called an inverted index and is a common element in all search engine algorithm.

Google derives meaning from links between pages called Anchor Text. These links tell Google how pages are related to one another and what words associate with each of these connections. To capture these relationships Google builds a matrix much like the page in word matrix but the second matrix indexes the words that appear in links rather than the words on page. We now have two major matrixes, one that identifies words on the page and one for link words pointing to each page.

It is the agreement between the text of the page and the references to it that measures ‘Referential Truth’ of a website. Words follow deeds from the real world and thus help in search engine rankings.

Google wants to rank your page and will rank it for whatever you want; you just not have to tell Google but you need to confirm to the algorithm and use algorithm rules. Once you understand these rules it really is not that difficult to rapidly create top rankings.

Next time around I’ll try and talk about what user’s are looking for and what does Google promise.

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