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How New SEO Ranking Factors Will Affect Your Blogging
By dan | April 3, 2007
Well, the votes are in. SEOs declare it is officially no longer 2005.
Web trends such as social media sites (which depend on user-generated content) have forced Google and other major search engines to reconsider how they rank the relevancy and authority of websites.
Not long ago, every SEO tip began with something like this:
“Create a targeted niche website. Focus on one topic, so search engines understand which keyword neighborhood your site belongs in.”
In the newly updated Google search engine ranking factors report on SEOmoz, influential SEOs overwhelmingly agree that we are no longer dealing with the same Google from 2005.
The biggest change in how Google ranks websites?
Most SEOs who were polled agree that a website’s global link popularity is the most obvious algorithmic change.
Ok…. what does this mean for bloggers?
It seems that Google’s algorithm update is accommodating to bloggers, review sites, Wikipedia, and basically any other site that displays user-generated content.
Personally, I see the increased importance of Global Link Popularity as Google’s response to the increased levels of user participation now found online. Many extremely popular, authoritative websites consist primarily user-generated content and do not focus on a single concrete topic.
Under older Google algorithms that rewarded niche topic websites, many popular sites containing large amounts of user-generated content would have never found their way to the top of the SERPS. By incorporating data about a site’s global link popularity, Google rewards sites that users visit frequently… even if the topics discussed on those sites tend to vary.
Most user-generated content - including blogs - is written in everyday language and cannot easily be contained inside a rigid niche topical focus.
Bottom line?
Google redefined the way it ranks websites to accommodate and reward bloggers & other sites containing user-generated content.
The updates reflect that Google strives to keep pace with the social web. Blog on!
Topics: Social Media, User-Generated, linking, Google, SEO |
April 3rd, 2007 at 8:36 pm
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