How Google ranks websites
We are trying to make it as simple as possible. Most of the SEO Companies are getting it wrong, they are focusing on offpage and onpage, it doesn't work like that. You need to make the website better along with making the webpage better. Either one of your speeches becomes popular or you become popular that every speech of yours is considered special. It can be divided across following categories:
- Rank the information - Page wise info & Sitewise info (Onpage and Onsite parameters) as people are looking for information (Content is what Google understands) [Also this is what you do on your website]
- Rank the popular websites - Page wise Popularity and Sitewise popularity (Off page and Off site parameters) as people want to see popular sites (Link is what adds popularity). Now popularity is again divided into topical/subject popularity, recent popularity, authority etc but everything is calculated based on links, like topical/subject pages linking increase topical/subject popularity, a lot of recent links increases recent popularity, a lot of links from authority websites increases authority and trust rank etc. [This is what others say about your website]
- Rank the websites with right signals: Google has shifted from Data to Signal a long time before, even before 2005 (Thats when we started focusing on Signals). Signals like growth rate, diversification in link, anchor text, link building rate etc. Website getting more visibility in short term is valued high as well, website getting visibility consistently is valued higher. (Signals) [This is about all activities related to your business name/website, including you adding info or other talking about it]. In long businesses it is more about citations (not links). So many parameters to consider for links. It is good to follow what is best for users and rest will fall in place by its own.
- (new) Penalize the negative signals: Bad Anchor text diversification, Bad Link growth rates, inconsistent linking and content factors. This is something crazy from search engines. They have never done something like this but now they are doing it. Even your competitors can build negative links and you will be penalized for it (Sad part of new era Google Updates). I wrote an article with IVIZ about it http://www.ivizsecurity.com/blog/penetration-testing/how-search-engine-security-testing-can-improve-website-ranking/
How Google ranks websites? Again, we have divided the checklist into 2 parts:
- Value of the page: What you are saying on the page (in terms of content and keywords) and others are saying in terms of the page (in terms of link). Each link is considered a vote to the page. So if a lot of quality websites are linking to your page then this page is recommended by many and thus Google will rank you higher. So focus on 2 things, getting the right content on the page & getting other quality websites link to your page.
- To understand it, its like, an activity of a person getting famous. Example: One song going viral for a singer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangnam_Style
- Value of the site: What are you saying on different pages of the site? What is the theme of the site? Theme in terms of content and keywords. And how many websites are linking to different pages of the website (recommendation for different pages of the site).
- It is like, a person is famous and everything he/she does gets more popular. Example: Obama signing a song, it will still get a good visibility not because of song but because of Obama being the president and Obama being so popular.
In short, the information and popularity of the website matters (Value of the person) and the information and popularity of the page matters (Value of the activity).
Forget data think Signals
You may get few thousand links (vote) in a month and even then don’t rank. It is not about data only, it is also about signal. In my words, it’s not only about how much money you have in your account but also about how you made the money. If all the money was a sudden gain and it becomes suspicious. The same goes with Google, if you gain popularity, if you gain content in a sudden manner you can come under scanner. Also all the sudden popularity in terms of content and link may be discounted. Signals are available on social media, content changes, links, link changes, traffic, user experience and many more. So keep focusing on doing good.
Forget Google, think “Spreading” and “Standing out”
Understand the Google Ranking Factors:
The weightage keeps changing, sometimes Google values the website more than valuing a page and sometimes pages are valued more than the website. Generally it will vary between 40 to 60% weightage.
- http://techshu.com/services/seo/seo-audit/onpage-offpage-factors (Value of the page)
- http://techshu.com/services/seo/seo-audit/onsite-offsite-factors (value of the site)