If you are interested in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), you will probably be aware of the effort involved in getting to the top of the search engines, especially Google. Google has recently decided to give a little more insight into the changes they are making in how pages are ranking in the Google Blog. This is great news for website owners who will have a bit more guidance as to what they should be doing to get their pages ranked above their competitors.
Google makes over 500 changes to the search ranking algorithm every year. This algorithm is the program that determines where every page that matches a particular search term is placed. Here are just a few they highlighted in a recent blog post:
- Related query results refinements: Sometimes we fetch results for queries that are similar to the actual search you type. This change makes it less likely that these results will rank highly if the original query had a rare word that was dropped in the alternate query. For example, if you are searching for [rare red widgets], you might not be as interested in a page that only mentions “red widgets.”
- More comprehensive indexing: This change makes more long-tail documents available in our index, so they are more likely to rank for relevant queries.
- New “parked domain” classifier: This is a new algorithm for automatically detecting parked domains. Parked domains are placeholder sites that are seldom useful and often filled with ads. They typically don’t have valuable content for our users, so in most cases we prefer not to show them.
- More autocomplete predictions: With autocomplete, we try to strike a balance between coming up with flexible predictions and remaining true to your intentions. This change makes our prediction algorithm a little more flexible for certain queries, without losing your original intention.
- Fresher and more complete blog search results: We made a change to our blog search index to get coverage that is both fresher and more comprehensive.
- Original content: We added new signals to help us make better predictions about which of two similar web pages is the original one.
- Top result selection code rewrite: This code handles extra processing on the top set of results. For example, it ensures that we don’t show too many results from one site (“host crowding”). We rewrote the code to make it easier to understand, simpler to maintain and more flexible for future extensions.
The main points for most website owners from this reinforces what Google generally says about providing useful, unique content. Here's Splice Marketings notes on these updates...
1. Use the terms most of your customers are searching for, but remember to include some alternatives in the text if you can. Even if a page only generates a few visits a month from each search term, these can add up, and very specific search terms tend to convert better.
2. With increased numbers of pages and documents and increased 'long tail' results, it is worth adding more pages and documents. Remember that Google can index more than just web pages - even PDF files and downloadable documents can be indexed.
4. Keep your blog up to date by adding fresh information. If you are looking for inspiration, social media tools like Twitter or Yahoo Answers are great for showing the questions real people are asking or topics they are interested in.
5. Try to have unique content for each page. This includes both content from other pages on your site, and from other web sites. Google is getting very good at picking out duplicates, and while there is no penalty, only one page will generally get shown, which may not be the best match for all searches.
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