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Achieving a top ranking in Google used to be relatively simple.
All it took was a lot of links, some on-page optimization, and soon you would
see your site rise in the rankings. Yet after a mess of updates, a lot of
speculation from `experts`, and what appears to be major changes in Google`s
algorithm, ranking well has entered a bit of a dark age.
Google confusion reigns. Recently a thread opened on the Site Reference
Forums for people to vent
their frustration over Google`s changing algorithms, the see-saw nature of
rankings, and the reams of conflicting information on what Google is actually
looking for. The thread has been a bit of therapy for those that have seen their
rankings slip and those that have yet to crack Google`s top rankings. It is, I
fear, indicative of how many webmasters feel when trying to understand
Google.
Google – An `Open` Book
Even though there has never been so much confusion about how Google ranks
websites, Google has never tried harder to be more open with the SEO community
about their ranking policies. In the past year or so, Google has offered more
examples, more direct advice, and more pro-active measures to help website
owners know what they are looking for, and more importantly, what to avoid.
Between Google Sitemaps, people like Matt Cutts offering free advice from within
the Googleplex, and Google`s own program of actively informing website owners of
potential problems with their site, Google is sharing a ton of information about
how they work, but relatively few webmasters seem to be listening.
It may partly be Google`s newfound open personality that is causing a lot of
the confusion. In general, website owners who either watch their rankings slip
for some unknown reason, or website owners who cannot seem to get their quality
site to crack the top rankings tend to be skeptical about anything Google says.
When a webmaster reads that Google frowns on link exchanges, yet sees a
competitor dominating the rankings with a link exchange, they naturally dismiss
the advice as not true.
The fact that these people do not seem to want to admit to is this: Google is
changing. The old ranking techniques that once could be used as a shortcut to a
top ranking no longer work. Google has learned, and continues to learn, for
better or worse, how to weed out websites that try to manipulate their rankings
through pandering to an imperfect algorithm.
The algorithm is still imperfect, and so is Google. With their increased
focus on reducing the effect of algorithm pandering they have demoted some very
legitimate websites and also raised some lower quality websites into the top of
their rankings. But they are changing all the same – and widely accepted
`shortcut` techniques are their target.
Conclusion Jumping
When it comes to SEO, a lot of webmasters live on Tom Smykowski`s `jump to
conclusions mat`. If they see one website that is using link exchanges that
has a top ranking for a particular keyword, they assume that link exchanges must
be the reason for the high ranking. If they find a single site that uses hidden
text and ranks well, then it must follow that Google `likes` these things.
Conclusion jumping is easy to do – especially when a particular method works for
your website, or is working for a competitor`s website.
Recently I wrote and published an article entitled “Valide
HTML – Does Google Care?” The article raised the question as to whether
Google actually preferred invalid HTML over valid HTML. Four websites were
tested on two keyphrases that had no competition. The results of the test had
sites with invalid HTML consistently ranking higher than those with valid
HTML.
The article was heavily criticized, and rightfully so (mea culpa, mea culpa,
mea culpa). A general conclusion was drawn from two very isolated cases, cases
that were being tested on keywords that did not have real life competition. At
best, the article could offer some insight into how Google ranks websites for
keywords with no competition, but to draw any larger conclusions would be a
logical error. (As a point of interest, there has been information that while
Google does not give additional weight to valid HTML, they do encourage it to
ensure crawlability – invalid HTML can certainly make a website impossible to
crawl. Of course, there is no penalty for valid HTML.).
The point of all this is simple: few SEO rules are going to hold true in
every example. Search results have both a macro-environments and
micro-environments. To draw conclusions from a single micro-environment, or even
a handful of micro-environments, about more general SEO theories is often a big
mistake. Just because you see one example of a link exchange working well, that
does not mean that Google wants to encourage link exchanges or that they are
unable to stop link exchanges.
What We Do Know
There is only one real certainty about Google: they are changing and will
continue to change. For the past few years, Google has been refining their
algorithm and rebuilding their index. Anyone who thinks “Big Daddy” is the last
of the major updates has not been paying attention. Google does not sit still
and will constantly change to more efficiently find what it is they are looking
for.
We know that Google is looking for content – good original content. They want
websites that are linked to naturally from reputable resources. They want to be
able to trust your website, which means that websites that they already trust,
and that are related to your industry must `vouch` for you. They want websites
that are easy to use for visitors, websites that visitors are actually looking
for.
We also know what Google is not looking for. They are not looking for
websites that pander to an algorithm, nor a site that tries to fake its way into
popularity through bogus links. The time is coming when outright abuse of the
system will no longer be a valid option.
All this is very vague – so how about some specifics?
- Link exchanges for SEO is a bad idea. There is a big difference between
link exchanges for SEO and two sites that happen to exchange links. Using
automatic link exchanges, having highly unrelated links, massive amounts of
links regardless of the quality, etc should be avoided at all costs.
- Purchasing links is definitely a bad idea. Some argue that Google could
never find out who is selling links. The fact is, though, that purchased links,
at least at the most basic level, is extremely easy to detect.
- Thousands of links does not mean what it used to. Links must be related. If
you want to see a significant effect, they should also come from highly trusted
websites in a natural way.
It is possible to be hurt by bad links.
- Obvious SE spam, such as hidden text, redirects, etc will eventually get
you banned.
- Being a careful webmaster is important. Innocent and careless mistakes can
and will cost you. Setting up a website with broken links, multiple URLs for the
same page, poor navigation, etc will scream poor quality.
- Rehashing content does not work. Google wants one of two things: 1)
completely original content, or 2) content conglomerated in a completely
original fashion. This goes along the duplicate content filter that is talked
about so much.
How do we know these things? Because Google has been open about what they are
looking for. These are not theories based on observations, these are things that
Google has discussed openly through employees, at conferences, through the tools
they offer us. Unfortunately many webmasters simply do not want to listen.
Mark Daoust is the owner of Site Reference and is the author of
Google Confusion and Some
Clarity
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