Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz's CEO, recently posted his personal opinion of how some of the key factors in Google's ranking system have changed through the years he has been in SEO. I learned about this from @o0x on Twitter. Now I do not claim to be a technical SEO expert but I have figured out how to get blog posts on the front page of Google. I did this first just for fun and now (warning commercial coming) to help others. So I was very interested in his opinions. He covered the four big factors. I provide a brief summary of what he said for each. Go to this blog for the details. These factors were the ones I knew so I was very interested in the graphic on his blog that shows their relative rise and decline.
Domain Trust/Authority – He said came this into consciousness in 2003 and over the last couple of years, has become the dominant factor in the success of rankings at Google. Anchor Text in External Links – He said while this is still a very powerful ranking tactic, it's not as it was before 2004. I really felt that it didn't carry the same power it did for those years afterwards. “Today, my belief is that anchor text has come to be regarded much as PageRank was after its dominance in the algorithm - as a technique that SEOs have focused on gaming to such an extent that much of it has become noise, and it's only really valuable when found in conjunction with other positive signals.”
On-Page Keyword Usage – He said that it not lost all of its ranking power, but it “still sits in the middle as an essential element, but one where "more" won't help you. This is in direct contrast to the other elements I've included in this diagram (where more does equal better rankings).” _
Raw PageRank / Link Juice - PageRank used to be everything and it built industries of link sellers and buyers. PageRank has been on decline as a ranking factor so some time. Remember Google keeps its methods secret and is always changing them to stay ahead of the gamers. So this is just his opinion. However, it is consistent with my intuition and experience.
My advice is to not game but do what best communicates to your readers. I use the second and third factors above more but with the goal of providing better information to readers. My understanding is that the first goal is more something you achieve than technique. I stay away from gaming methods on both blogs and Twitter and just try to have meaningful conversations. Also, remember that you have to speak to two audiences, Google and your readers. If you only speak to Google you might get readers but they will not stay or come back.
What has been your experience?
Post Script Thanks to Searchnewz for reposting this.
But not every link is good for your site. Some of them can cause web site to be penalized by Google. It’s evident that sometimes you cannot control which sites link to yours one, but you should control which sites you link to. That’s why inbound links cannot make harm, but if a page links to penalized ones the result can be grievous. So, try to be more scrupulous in your link building campaign aimed to better Google PageRank.thank you for posting.
-faith-
Posted by: Orange County search engine optimization | April 20, 2009 at 09:59 PM