Search Engine Positioning IV - Using
Link Relevancy to Raise Your Site Ranking With the Search Engines
Google has shaken up the webmaster’s world with their new algorithms
and ranking criteria. It seems that they are now using link relevancy
along with other algorithms to generate their search results. Search
engines have been looking for ways to make it harder for webmasters
and SEO practitioners to manipulate their ranking. It’s a move that’s
been long coming, and once Google gets everything ironed out, I
foresee the rest of the engines and directories following suite.
The question becomes, do I prepare now for the inevitable, or do
I wait and see what happens? This article is for those who want
to plan ahead and do their damage control before they are dropped
from rankings once again.
Link Relevancy - What is it, and why Does it Matter?
Link relevancy is based on the outgoing links on your pages. Where
do you link to? Does the link fall in line with what your site theme
is, or is the link to something totally different? In ways, it can
be said that these new link relevancy algorithms allow Google to
dictate what pages link to. I say the new algorithm prevents unscrupulous
SEO practices from manipulating the search results by using content
similarities to rank certain pages higher.
There are arguments on each side of this topic, and no one side
is necessarily right. The point is simple. Do you want your pages
to rank well or not? If you want them to rank well, then you follow
the beat of Google’s drum. If not, then you link to whatever you
want and let the chips fall where they may. It’s their search engine,
and they can do what they want with it. Realize you are not going
to change that and move on. I hope that you will move on to your
own betterment and follow the ideal. However, always keep in mind
this one staggering fact; it was the unscrupulous SEO’s that caused
this. If you are guilty of trying to manipulate rankings without
writing rich site-specific content, then you tried to take the easy
way out. The easy way usually always bites us in the backside at
the end.
To understand link relevancy I’ll use one of SCGP’s pages as an
example. If you look at our affiliate
strategy article, you will notice that we designed it to rank
highly on searches for affiliate strategy and affiliate marketing
strategy. We wrote the content focusing on those words. You will
also notice that this article is broken down into various different
pages because of the length. If you look at those links, you will
also see that affiliate strategy is in the link, and the pages have
affiliate strategy in the name. Looking at the page further, you
will notice some links right below our sponsor buttons on the right
side of the page. They have a heading that reads something like
Affiliate Strategy Link Resources. If you look at all those links,
you will find that they lead off to other pages that ranked highly
when a search for affiliate strategy was done at Google. When they
were linked, none of these pages had a Google PR of less than five.
We’ll come back to this in the next section of this article. However,
why is link relevancy so important?
Dan
Theis has written an excellent article on Google that explains
the new algorithms. He does admit that some of it is speculation,
but it’s the best thing I have found so far that explains why things
are happening at Google as they are. He also explains why link relevancy
is so important. To boil it down to basics, the algorithm works
on an assumption. The assumption is that a person doing a specific
search on the internet would tend to follow links that related to
the intended search topic. It is different from Google’s old algorithm,
which was based on a random walk and random search.
The new algorithm pertains to specific intent and the way that
a search topic would be found if the walk was not random. In basics,
if you were looking for "apple" you would not follow links that
lead to "orange". Dan calls this new algorithm "Topic-Sensitive
PageRank" and points to other papers for more in depth reading.
The reason it’s so important is that it will eventually increase
the relevancy of search results. Since searches are the lifeblood
of any search engine or directory, it only makes sense for others
to follow suite to implement the same kind of results for their
search engines and directories. It’s the fight to provide the best
search results that will force the rest to fall in line.
Back
to Table of Contents
Topic-Sensitive PageRank (Article Continues)
Other Search Engine Positioning Articles:
Related E-Book Downloads
By James R. Sanders
February 3, 2004
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About the Author
James R. Sanders is the owner of Sanders
Consultation Group Plus. He has been a webmaster and website designer since
1997. He has also been involved in self employment ventures since 1992. He is
presently a contributing author of NewbieHangout,
and has been published through WebProNews
and 4Rankings.com.
His writing is targeted to webmasters, would be webmasters, website designers,
would be website designers, self employed, or those researching information
looking for solutions to questions associated with design, business operations,
and promotion today. His goal is to provide practical information based upon
his years of experience to help webmasters, website designers, and self employed
people achieve their goals in today's competitive global market. You can subscribe
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