The Rich Affiliate

What is this Google’s Patent?

The filling of the US Patent (#20050071741- Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data) by Google has caught many SEOs off guard in their strategies forthwith with regard to ranking of sites in SERPs. The contents of the patent reveal that search giant has incorporated sweeping changes in the way it works, and has waged a war against search engine spam and artificial link inflation.

Google has become awfully aware that some of their results have begun to be well manipulated by people with deep pockets, simply going out and buying thousands and thousands of links. Sad enough, it has resulted into a damn situation wherein one often comes with links on the first page of the results that have nothing to do with what he or she wishes to look for.

Now, in the post-patent scenario, often used, misused and overused search engine strategies that paid off in the past, simply seem to be worn-out tools. This patent, which in all its intent strives to make information retrieval on Google on the basis of historical data, will definitely reorient it to dish out results to highly relevant and content heavy sites for a given search term.

So, what are the paradigm shifts by virtue of this patent?

• Google is all geared up to start looking at history very minutely. This, amongst other things, includes the history of your website, the history of individual pages on your website, and the history of links to your website and even pages within it.

• Google is well underway to take into consideration the traffic patterns of your site’s visitors. It will sharply focus on things such as length of stay on the page that someone gets through the link as well as how many links, both internal to your site and external to it, get used by a visitor.

• Google has considered it imperative to look at user behavior on your site, and the history or the trend of that behavior. This entails not only what kinds of links are browsed, where they go, and what the link text says, but more specifically user browsing behavior and surfing patterns.

• It is going to look out for new content on existing pages as well as new pages being created. It implies that a content driven site, that people use, like, and come back to, is likely to climb up the rankings.

• Moreover, not only is Google going to begin looking at your site’s history and the history of visitors to and from your site, it is also going to be grouping all of their various history trends into a single lump and provide crucial scoring.

Strategies that need a serious rethinking

• People tactically use “content randomizers” in an effort to make Google think their sites are being changed frequently. This strategy seems to be redundant as Google will be maintaining your site’s history which is the crux of the new patent.

• Sites will not only need to have links as was customary in recent past, but those links will have to be utilized to be counted.

• Content “freshness” is going to matter crucially as against the past trend. Google is all set to look for “freshness” in not just your own pages, but links to your site as well.

• You can no longer lose sight on your focus in providing your web surfers what they want even though your hitherto engagement in the same yielded some results.

• Google going to scrutinize under its close observation the links to your site, the number of them, where they go. Let alone this, Google will also be tracking click through ratios of those links.

• Your site’s “stickiness” is going to be important to your rankings within Google regardless of what you used to resort to get rankings so far.

So, what are the strategic choices before SEOs in the aftermath of this patent?

• Now it is in the fitness of the things that folks that sell “links” on their website should have a second thought why and how they are doing this. The patent specifications precisely call for the links to be actually used by people. So, this explicitly implies that you’ll need those links to be well within content.

• With a good mix of content and links off to external sites and pages, you are likely to get most “bump,” especially when the links are well surrounded by other content.

• Your Search engine strategy should take care of the fact that new content is added regularly to your site and people are actually staying to read the content.

• It is desirable to keep your pages themed, relevant and most importantly consistent. You have to establish reliability. The days of spamming Google are nearing to an end.

• When it comes to linking, you must clearly avoid the hocus pocus or magic bullet linking schemes.

Let’s read writings on the walls before it is too late

• If you participate in quick fix link exchange scams, use automated link exchange software or buy hundreds of links at once, there are pretty chances that Google will interpret your efforts as a spam attempt and act accordingly. So, tread with caution.

• Since Google is capable of tracking the click-through rates to your web site, you have got to make sure that your web pages have attractive titles and utilize calls to action so that web surfers click on them in the search results

• If you stand in need of multi page content changes implement the changes in segments over time. Continue to use your original keywords on each page you change to maintain theme consistency.

• You can simply make significant content changes by implementing lateral keywords to support and reinforce your vertical keyword(s) and phrases. This will also help eliminate keyword stuffing.

• Make sure to determine whether the keywords you’re using require static or fresh search results and do update your web site content accordingly. On this point RSS feeds may play a more valuable and strategic role than ever before in keeping pages fresh and right away at the top of the SERPs.

• Webmasters must look forward, plan and mange their domains more tightly than ever before or risk plummeting in the SERPs

• Relevant content swaps may be a pretty fine alternative to the standard link exchange and allow you some control of the link page elements

The heart of the matter

This patent is, in fair probability, going to force websites to become much more “customer” centric, and that’s always a good thing. The criterion Google has set for search rankings, and the direction search innovation is going speak volumes on Google’s exemplary efforts to provide the best search service in the world.

Beating the competition on Google is easier than ever, if you know a couple simple rules. Rule number one is “Link like a pro to win Google’s top spots.” Rule number two is “Focus 90% of your time and effort on Rule number 1.” It really is that important.

But don’t worry. Linking is a whole lot easier today than it was a few years ago. Experience has taught us a lot and with the information in this article you won’t need to worry about endless trial and error. We have a simple and repeatable process that anyone can do, as easy as 1, 2, 3.

That said; let’s take a look at the linking strategies that Google will give you the most credit for…

Link Strategy 1: Reap the Most Benefit from Anchor Text

You probably already know that anchor text is the clickable word or words that make up a hyperlink. But what you may not yet fully realize is just how powerful anchor text is. Want to see for yourself? Try a simple experiment…

Go to http://www.Google.com and search for “click here” (without quotes.) Did you get a link for Adobe Acrobat Reader at number 1? Why is that? Check out the page. They have no mention of “click here” anywhere on the page or in the META tags.

So why does it rank number 1 on Google for “click here”? It’s all thanks to anchor text. More specifically, it’s because of the countless pages that have “click here” as anchor text that links to Adobe’s Acrobat Reader download page.

Did you notice how many competing pages there are for “click here” on Google? Almost Two Billion! Anchor text is extremely important. Here are a few rules of thumb to get the most from yours…

A.) Use your three most important keywords for your anchor text. Specifically, your most important word 60% of the time; your second most important keyword 25% and your third keyword 15%. Remember that is for each page you link to (every page should focus on 2 to 3 keywords.)

B.) Use “long tail” keywords when appropriate (3 or more words in the keyword phrase.)

C.) If your anchor text is part of a paragraph, like a signature block, make certain the surrounding text is optimized for the keyword you want or close variations. Be sure that text varies as much as possible. You want to have plenty of versions of the surrounding text block so Google doesn’t ding it as duplicate content.

Link Strategy 2: Make Your Target URLs Laser Accurate

URL accuracy, or format consistency, is extremely important. Make certain you use the exact same URL string whenever you request a link. Even though a URL link beginning with “http” or “www” (or both) might resolve to the same webpage, Google sees them as different destinations.

Want to see for yourself? Go back to Google.com and enter “Links: http://” (without quotes) followed by www… any domain name you want. This shows you the inbound links for that specific domain.

OK, easy enough. Jot down the number of links. Now try it again WITHOUT the “www.” And record the number of links. Now try it a third time with the “www” but NOT the http://”. Are you getting different numbers? This is because Google sees them as different link destinations.

Link Strategy 3: Go Beyond Reciprocal Linking

Reciprocal links just aren’t enough any more. Google now discounts the importance of simple link swaps so reciprocal links alone will not do the trick like they used to. But don’t worry, with a little time or money or both, you can have the best links imaginable.

The two fastest and least expensive ways are by submitting your site to directories or paying a link service, but NOT a reciprocal linking service. Let’s start with directories…

But before we do, there are two downsides to links from directories that I need to mention. First, Google has been discounting directory links over the past few months. Second, some directories charge a fee to get listed (for example Yahoo charges $299 per year!)

But don’t despair. Links from directories may not be all they used to, but they still help your SEO efforts. There is a great page I like to visit that has all the most important directories listed, along with links to the site, GRP (Google PageRank rating), cost (if any) and more; http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php

You can click on the column headings to sort by any category you want. This makes finding the freebies, or top GPR sites quick and easy. This site also appears to have some sort of paid membership available but I just use the free link above and it does all I need and more.

Important Note: There is a third possible risk that comes from link farms, which are sometimes very similar to certain link services. That risk is having too many inbound links coming from a single IP range (Internet Protocol address.) Google HATES this and will discount all these links, or worse.

As for reciprocal linking services, I recommend you avoid them like the plague. However there is a nice solution called “3 way linking” that still allows you the set it and forget it option. Here’s one service I’ve had great results with…

3WayLinker.com (http://www.3WayLinker.com) does not link sites back to each other reciprocally. Instead it creates a series of one way links that are counted purely as inbound links by Google. Even more it helps eliminate duplicate content in your link text and makes sure all inbound links are from a wide range of IP addresses.

Here’s how it works… Site “A” links to site “B”. Site “B” links to site “C”. And then site “C” links to site “A”. So each is a true one way link. This also gives the system more options regarding which sites form a team. With reciprocal links, if both sites use the same hosting provider, there is a very high chance you will be linked within the same IP range. With three way linking this problem is eliminated.

So to recap,
1.) Get the most out of your anchor text;
2.) Be very consistent with your link URL, and
3.) Do more than just reciprocal linking.

Now go get that top spot you’ve been after!