It has been almost a year since (November 16, 2003) the famous, or infamous, Google Florida update. Most observers
agree that this was the start of some fairly radical changes in the way Google determines how to place sites on
their search results pages (SERPs). Their algorithms have continued to fluctuate and change ever since. Nobody,
including the author, can be sure of the changes that have been made, or of what the most important criteria for
SERP placement currently are. However, I will suggest in this article that the old dichotomy between content
and links may have been reconciled by the changes in Google's algorithms over the past 10 or 11 months.
In the past there have been various approaches to Search Engine Optimization. Two distinct schools of thought have
arisen and have been expounded. On the one hand, the school of "Content is King" claimed that content was the
most important element in SEO. While on the other hand the school of "Links are King", claimed that inbound links
were the best way to get top rankings. I believe that the new Google algorithms may draw these two schools of SEO
thought together.
A word about Google before we go on. I will use the term search
engine and Google interchangeably through out this article. I am
aware that there are other search engines, but Google still has
in excess of 50% of the search engine traffic and is really the
major target of most SEO.
What we know for sure:
The reason there has been such fierce debate between these two
camps is that the search engines will never reveal their formulas
for ranking web sites in their search results. Debate tends to
be supported by questionable empirical evidence, and a high
degree of speculation. What we do know for certain is the
following.
Content:
If one builds a web site in which the content is very unique,
Google will rank that site in the SERPs on the basis of this
content. This is a combination of the words found in the title,
in the page headings, and the body of the text. This fact was
demonstrated a few months ago in an experiment done by Mel
Nelson and reported on WebProWorld.
What Mel's experiment indicates is that, for pages in unique
niche markets, the content of the web site may be adequate to
obtain a high ranking in Google's search results. Webmasters who
work on pages of this type maintain that content got them their
ranking and that content is the only really important element
in SEO success.
This is an interesting claim with regards to Google, because
Google was built upon the founders' use of PageRank. PageRank
assumes that incoming links are a type of "vote" for the
importance and relevance of the page. Google's algorithms have
always used, or placed a great deal of importance on, inbound
links in ranking pages for position in their SERPs. In fact,
Google will not keep a site in its index unless there is at
least one inbound link.
Despite this, the "Content is King" school persists in some
circles, and is characterized by a thought, or claim, that
anyone who participates in aggressive link building is slightly
suspect, or is in some way cheating the system.
Linking:
We also know that it is possible, through aggressive link
building campaigns, to have a site rank very high in the SERPs
because of search terms or keyword phrases that do not appear
anywhere on the page. In the past, this was achieved by using
the keyword phrases in the anchor text of the link. This
practice has become known as "Google Bombing" and may still be
illustrated by doing a search with the phrase "miserable
failure", which returns the official White House biography of
George W Bush in number one position.
For the uninitiated, anchor text is the actual text phrase on
which users would click to follow the link. In the past, "Click
here" was commonly used for anchor text. Today, one can almost
tell whether a site has been optimized by the absence of "click
here" used in links.
The "Links are King" camp maintains that content is relatively
unimportant to the ranking of a site. Unfortunately, this is
often interpreted as an assertion that there should be no effort
or thought given to content. While this may be true for pure SEO
achievement, even the "Links are King" advocates acknowledge
that once visitors arrive on the site they must find what they
are looking for or the site will not be successful. However, to
get people to the site via the search engines, content is not
important for sites in highly competitive market segments that
wish to rank well for popular search terms.
Content should be written as completely and as carefully as
possible, but for competitive search terms, it is not critical
to getting a site a top ranking in the SERPs.
How the New Google May Reconcile These Two Camps:
Google has made some dramatic changes in the ranking of sites
in their SERPs since November 16, 2003. There have been several
more adjustments, or updates, since then, but things are
definitely different now than they were prior to November 16th.
No one can be certain of the changes Google has made. Google
watchers know that over the past couple of years, the search
engine has bought companies and registered patents for a variety
of technologies involved in semantic analysis. Many believe that
Google is attempting to do a more in-depth analysis of the
relevance and of the content of the page on which the inbound
link originates.
In the past, PageRank was simply a mathematical calculation
based on the PageRank of all the pages linking to each other
or sharing links. The original assumption, no doubt, was that
people would only link to and from pages with similar, or
complementary, information. In other words, relevant information.
As the value of links, or backlinks, as inbound links are known,
became evident, webmasters started to solicit links from
non-related sites.
The problem with this sort of system is that it is open to a
certain amount of sp@mming. It is now thought that Google is
using some combination of Local Rank, Applied Semantics, Topic
Sensitive PageRank, Hilltop or Stemming in an attempt to more
precisely measure the relevance of an inbound link. These tools,
or technologies, would all perform some degree of content
analysis of the page containing the link. This analysis would
determine if the page was relevant or topically related to the
content or information on the page to which it is linked.
The Connection:
If what has been said in the section above is true, suddenly
content has a new importance in the ranking of a page. Now it
is not so much the content of one's own page that will get it
ranked in the SERPs, but the content of the pages from which
the links are coming. All interconnected pages are now giving
each other a boost in relevance. In addition to the mathematical
PageRank boost, it suddenly becomes important that all
interconnecting pages have relevant, or related, content. We may
have come full circle. Links are the factor that will get a page
ranked highly in the SERPs. However, content is what will give
your backlinks their ultimate ranking value.
About The Author
Bob Wakfer is the owner of Computer Partners and a long time student and
practitioner of SEO. Computer Partners offers web site design, hosting and search engine optimization for its
clients. If you would like to discuss any ofthese services with Bob you can e-mail him at
bob@compar.com.
